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STOP, STOP, l COMMAND YOU ! ’’ — Page 276. 






LEPIDUS 

THE 

CENTURION 

A Roman of To-day 

By 

J • - 

EDWIN LESTER^ ARNOLD 

Author of tf Phra the Phoenician etc. 

If 

3 5 



New York 

THOMAS Y. CROWELL £sf CO. 

PUBLISHERS 










THE LIBRARY OF 
CONGRESS, 

One Oopy Received 

FEB. 12 1902 

COFYTWQHT ENTRY 

h+v. I -/*?* / 

CLASS Cl xXa No. 

a a WT + k 

COPY A. 


Copyright, IQOI, by 
THOMAS Y. CROWELL & CO. 




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CONTENTS 


CHAPTER PAGE 

I. I EXHUME MYSELF I 

II. THE SLEEPER AWAKENED 15 

III. — AND REHABILITATED 31 

IV. SOME DINNER AND AN ALARM 41 

V. THE CENTURION PLAYS CENTAUR 57 

VI. AN INTERRUPTED EXPLANATION 76 

VII. THE ROMAN REFLECTS 87 

VIII. SHE COMES 1 13 

IX. THE OLD LOVE AND THE NEW 128 

X. A CHAPTER OF ACCIDENTS 136 

XI. A STRANGE DISCOVERY 1 50 

XII. WE PICNIC WITH OUR ANCESTORS 165 

XIII. LOVE, THE IMMORTAL * 1 77 

XIV. THE HERO TURNS CYNIC 197 

XV. LEPIDUS PHILOSOPHISES 224 

XVI. SOME REPROACHES AND A PROPOSAL .... 24O 

XVII. SO AS BY FIRE 250 

XVIII. THE LAST RESORT 266 


XIX. “ SPOILS TO THE VICTOR; DEATH TO THE VANQUISHED ” 281 



Lepidus the Centurion 


CHAPTER I 

I EXHUME MYSELF 

T HERE could be no doubt about it : I, Louis 
Allanby, Squire and J.P., young, healthy, 
in full possession of all those faculties with 
which it had pleased Providence to bless me at my 
birth, and in the enjoyment of a rent roll exceeding 
even in these hard times three thousand per annum, 
was unequivocally bored ! 

I was bored to death of sleek sufficiency that after- 
noon on which this narrative begins. I was sick 
of the good fellowship of those laughing men and 
women who drank my wine, and rode my horses 
back yonder at the Manor House; there was no 
pride in my wide acres, no pleasure in the stream 
that ran speckled with summer sunshine through 
the park ; my rods were idle, I hated my guns — if I 
had only been a little more vicious there might have 
been fun in life for me, and if I had been virtuous 


i 


2 


LEPIDUS THE CENTURION 


there might have been contentment. But I was a 
blank, a cipher, a healthy living nonentity, and in 
gloomy knowledge of the fact I had strolled out into 
the pine woods to sulk over my good fortune that 
pleasant summer afternoon. 

Had I been a fool, life might have been pleas- 
anter, for an empty head and heart are easily filled, 
but I was not absolutely that. At school “ young 
Allanby ” was branded as the cleverest — and laziest 
— fellow in his class. At college he broke the hearts 
of two well-meaning tutors, and then astounded 
friends and enemies alike by plunging red-hot one 
day from a rat hunt into the sacred quiet of the ex- 
amination hall and emerging with a creditable de- 
gree! 

And thus it had been with me always; wast- 
ing my opportunities so assiduously, that my well 
wishers could but thank Providence my stomach 
would never have to rely on my head for sustenance ; 
and even my dear widowed mother sighed as she 
put away in lavender all the womanly ambitions she 
had had for me, and tried to console herself with 
the vague reflection that if I failed in everything 
else, at least I might make a creditable country 
bumpkin. 

Amongst my studies at college, classics had al- 
ways interested me. In my dullest moments the 


I EXHUME MYSELF 


3 


rhetoric of those fine old Romans who wrote for a 
young world with the ardour of youth rarely failed 
somehow to stir a current in my stagnant blood, and 
thus it was that on the afternoon in question, being 
especially dull, I had wandered through the dusty 
library at the Manor, and brought out the topmost 
volume of a pile someone had thrown out from the 
shelves in a hasty quest. It was not much of a book 
to look at, but as it was quite certain to bore me as 
efficiently as any other of its fellow thousands, I 
strolled away with it; down over the tennis-courts, 
where the peach-cheeked girls were playing tennis; 
down where, at the garden bottom, the stream 
widened out into a lake, dotted with water-lilies and 
shadowed by fringing trees, and thence sauntering 
along its rim, through meadow-sweet and yellow 
water flags, till the reedy mere narrowed again, 
and crossing the neck by a rustic bridge, I turned up 
into the firs on the hillside. 

Here was comparative peace. The ridiculous 
laughter of those strawberry-sucking jades was lost 
in the distance ; the glitter of the pool came up only 
here and there in gold spangles into this welcome 
gloom, the brown pine needles were soft under foot, 
the sigh of the wind in the resinous boughs over- 
head sounded to me like the monotonous pulse of my 
life, and with a growl of discontent at all things and 


4 


LEPIDUS THE CENTURION 


all men, I pulled that book from my pocket and dip- 
ped into its crabbed pages. 

Bah! it was the stupidest stuff in a hundred 
stupid books I had sampled that week. The classic 
fool, where I opened on him, was declaring life to be 
splendid and extensive, passing on and on while 
each continuous soul, broadening and brightening 
some distant goal, wore out as it went through 
the ages many bodies — the giddiest rubbish that 
was ever handed down by time to prove that some 
day, as the circles of existence were completed, 
those who lived when that classic dreamer penned 
his nonsense in ancient Rome would be ripe 
again — would be due each ancient spirit to inhabit 
once more a human form and tread this earth 
anew — what nonsense ! I did not even try to under- 
stand the writer closely, I dimly gathered what he 
meant by a glance at his first half-dozen headings, 
then, for comment, shut his ancient leather covers 
with a snap, and flung him into a bush for stoats and 
weasels to study at their leisure. 

And yet there was a certain dreamy pleasantness 
in the idea. One must believe something, I idly 
speculated as I leant against a rock and stared at the 
freckled sunshine through the leaves — and why not 
this ? Such a scheme would give a man a chance to 
amend his misdeeds in new lives, pay his debts and 


I EXHUME MYSELF 


5 


collect his rents, moral and spiritual. Even if that 
mildewed old heathen in the gorse bush at my feet 
had not lighted on the absolute truth, yet he might 
have been on the trail of it. Even I myself had 
often thought I felt at times something of that which 
I had never experienced in fact, and had knowledge 
somewhere in my remotest nature of things of which 
I had not had experience; why should not all this be 
the dim evidence of some such scheme as that ancient 
writer had concocted ? 

I brooded over it for an hour or so, not in truth 
making much of the fancy, and then sauntered on 
again, hands in pockets, whistling to my idleness, 
until, half way round the steep forest knoll over- 
looking the valley, and deep in shadowy pine and 
juniper, a sprightly little squirrel caught my eye, 
and then another. They were love making, poor 
beasts, and I smiled to see their ardour. The little 
lady in russet was dodging round and round a tree 
stem, now head up, now tail, and the gentleman 
after her, his bead eyes glittering with excitement. 
Round and round, to and fro, in splendid merri- 
ment and fun, up and down, round and round the 
branches, till at last the breathless pursued was 
fairly “ cornered ” — driven in a careless moment to 
the end of a broken limb, and retreat cut off behind ! 
Surely he had her now. I heard him squeak with 


6 


LEPIDUS THE CENTURION 


exultation, and a ripple of joy seemed to run up his 
bushy tail, but in a twinkling the lady had thrown 
herself off into the air, had lit safely on the moss 
twenty feet below, had rushed to a fallen pine tree, 
and spinning round and round its prostrate stem 
half-a-dozen times in sheer exuberance of fun and 
spirit, went off into the distant undergrowth with a 
long start, and her wooer hot in pursuit again. 

But for those little beasts, this book might never 
have been written. I walked over to the broken 
pine, a fine stem fallen only a night or two before, and 
you know how such a one lies? The green head, 
crushed by its descent, rested, a confused mass, in 
the shadow of the nearest trees ; the red bole, straight 
as an arrow, gleamed in the slanting sunshine com- 
ing through the gap above left by its fall, and be- 
yond, the great shield of root-tangled turf and 
gravel stood upright over the broad scar of earth it 
had left exposed. Going round behind that ragged 
buttress I kicked the loose new rubble idly with my 
foot, and as I did so, noticed a squared corner of 
stone amongst the rest. The angles were clear and 
sharp, and my first idea was to stoop and pick it up, 
but it would not come. I cleared a little more sand 
and rubbish away with a boot tip, thinking nothing 
of the find as yet, and then saw it was not a broken 


I EXHUME MYSELF 7 

brick or such like lying before me, but the corner of 
an earth-fast flag stone. 

This began to be interesting, and I stood still a 
minute or two, half amused and half surprised. 
There certainly had been an ancient settlement here- 
abouts, I told myself, though never as far as we 
knew upon this hill, and in the Manor hall were two 
glass cases of red Roman pottery dug up from a 
field half-a-mile down the stream. But this hill had 
always been unexplored and silent — sacred to shad- 
ows and sleep; how could this well-trimmed flag- 
stone, newly laid bare, have come here, and were 
there more like it ? I set to work diligently, with a 
flat bit of stone for spade, and, as the rubble was 
all loose, and the slab lay flat and shallow, soon de- 
fined its shape, and, what was more, to my increas- 
ing wonder discovered a bronze ring at the further 
edge, green with age, but sound and perfect still. 
It was like the cover of a well, and when I had given 
my find a final brush down with a wisp of bracken 
leaves, I stood perspiring and staring at it with 
silent interest — yes, the first genuine interest that 
had stirred my stagnant pulses for many weeks. 

Then it goes without saying, I wanted to see what 
was below ; but though, taking off my coat, I tugged 
at that bronze ring until my muscles ached, it would 


8 


LEPIDUS THE CENTURION 


not move. So strategy had to come to the aid of 
main strength, and fetching a stout fir branch from 
the neighbouring heap, one end was pushed in under 
the flag-stone, and leaning all my weight upon the 
lever, after a breathless moment or two, with a 
strange thrill of delight and fascination, I saw the 
soil gape, a black crack start and fly round the dusty 
square of the block, and directly afterwards the 
loosened stone rose on its rear as I worked at it — up 
until it was perpendicular, and then a final push sent 
it floundering over on its bronze-ringed back in a 
cloud of dust, and left me master of whatever lay 
hidden down underneath. 

A square, deep hole, black as midnight, lay before 
me, whence rose the quaintest, the most antique of 
smells, as I stood gaping over it. I have often 
thought there is more in the philosophy of scents 
than we yet recognise — that maybe the way to our 
souls through our derided noses is as short as any 
other — but, anyhow, that quaint aroma coming up 
from the black void fascinated me. It was not 
wicked, nor unpleasant, yet somehow that impalpa- 
ble taint, that breath of long silence and suspension 
sent my blood to my head, and the courage out of 
my knees for a moment, as though a voice had 
spoken, or I had seen some sight of terror down in 
that black patch before me. Fortunately no one 


I EXHUME MYSELF 


9 


witnessed my momentary weakness; 'the repose of 
the afternoon woods was all around, the curtain of 
the shadows hid that little arena from all outsiders, 
and the now drooping sun began to pour his rays 
right across the mouth of the hollow. 

I looked again, and by the yellow gleam saw the 
hole was not so deep as had seemed at first — it was 
scarcely deeper than my own six feet of height, with 
a broad step at the bottom, and a show of sandy 
floor beyond — why, if that was all, there was noth- 
ing so dreadful about the matter ; and the smell, too, 
had all but passed away. Probing the bottom with 
my fir pole, and finding it as it looked, firm and 
substantial, I hesitated a minute, then boldly drop- 
ped through the opening on to the smooth floor be- 
low. 

Black darkness again for a minute or two to my 
unaccustomed eyes, with an awe-inspiring silence! 
Then, as I came to see better, slowly four narrow 
walls built themselves up out of the shadows, walls 
of rough strange masonry with courses of red tiles 
showing dimly round them, plain, unsmoothed, ris- 
ing from a clean-swept sandy base, and across that 
floor, right in the mid of the little underground 
chamber, there rose to my strengthening vision from 
the gloom an oblong block of masonry, island-like 
in the shadows, and my heart beat a trifle faster 


10 


LEPIDUS THE CENTURION 


again as I noticed there was something grey, indefi- 
nite and mysterious stretched out upon it ! I stood 
for a moment flat against the entrance wall, a white 
butterfly hovering, I remember, daintily in the 
golden gleam just overhead, then slowly and stealth- 
ily sidled into the chamber with a tumultuous rush 
of feelings in my heart out of all proportion to the 
necessities of the case. 

By the great Jove, there was something on that 
central bier, something human and long, its shape 
only dimly shown by sad sage-coloured wrappings 
that seemed to be falling to pieces, so old they were, 
even as I looked. It was a man for certain, perfect 
in outline, now that I could see his geography, and 
stepping over to the pile, I picked up a corner of the 
dusty cloth covering his face, and drew it gently off. 
It was not, as might have been expected, only the 
bare framework of extinct humanity lying there so 
still beneath it, but the head and shoulders of a being 
marvellously preserved, singularly and extraordinar- 
ily life-like. I gazed with amazement at the dim 
outline of those features for a space, then, urged I 
know not by what, pulled down the dusty rags again 
wherewith he was covered, inch by inch, until he 
was unshrouded to his knees — a well-built supple 
fellow in ancient clothes, about my height and 
make — it was marvellous to see him lie there so still 


I EXHUME MYSELF 


ii 


and perfect, and I eyed him over while a cool, resin- 
ous, refreshing breath from the pine trees outside 
came down into our den, and a square patch of sun- 
light crept up the bier lying in a pool of brightness 
upon his feet — I looked him up and down, and the 
third time could almost have sworn that one of his 
skyward pointing toes twitched under its dusty cov- 
erings. An absurd idea! It was, of course, but 
the wavering reflection of a pine branch against the 
blue sky, or a freak of my excited fancy, and to give 
my nerves time to cool, I fell to exploring the crypt 
as well as might be in the uncertain light. 

The place was absolutely bare and void of inter- 
est, except on the wall farthest from the entrance. 
There, directly in a line with the recumbent figure's 
head was a tablet, and on it, to my delight, an in- 
scription. Most lovingly those faded letters were 
dusted with a handkerchief, and fingered over until 
they came out with something of their pristine fresh- 
ness. 

“ Marcus Lepidus, the Centurion," I translated to 
myself, “ is Asleep; Tread Lightly!" 

Asleep ! I should think so, but how long had he 
slept? There was no date, not the slightest other 
sign or clue. Still it was something to know yonder 
old fellow was a Roman, and this a Roman-British 
tomb into which I had blundered so strangely. 


12 


LEPIDUS THE CENTURION 


What a good paper it would make for an antiquar- 
ian journal, and how those beflannelled tennis play- 
ers would stare when the story was told to them 
at dinner-time! 

I went over to my friend Lepidus again and gazed 
at him with folded arms and silent awe. It is not 
every day you come on such a page as this from the 
book of the Old World, and my classic reading 
was still fresh upon me. What a strange unkempt 
England it must have been to which this olive- 
skinned exile came ! Was it the galleys that brought 
him? — ‘two weeks of sour black bread and water as 
the peaked prow of the trireme plunged slowly 
through the black waters of Armorica. Or was it 
overland, over the green flats beyond Albi, round 
under the knees of the Southern sloping Alps, and so 
to Gaul and the British seas ? There were no refresh- 
ment rooms at Anderida when this traveller landed 
you may take it for certain, and walled Camulo- 
dunum fringed with marshes, Deva on the Northern 
estuary, Eboracum itself, and all those other city- 
keeps where the Roman eagle lorded it over inter- 
minable barbarian wastes — oh, for an hour’s remem- 
brance of the things those tight-shut eyes had seen ! 
Poor Lepidus — I laid my hand across his face sym- 
pathetically, then snatched it away again, for I could 
have sworn the lid my finger touched had winked. 


I EXHUME MYSELF 


*3 


It was too foolish, he was dead — dead for certain ; 
and yet as I bent over him a vague unreasonable 
dread rose within me. I stared and frowned at that 
dim, handsome, dusty face, then calling my pride to 
aid — and, thank God, that at least has never yet 
failed me — put a hand again lightly upon his chest. 
Poor heart, it was still enough, not a flutter now 
to tell how it must have pulsed and jumped once on 
a time. Think how it ran riot in its first battle, 
think how it jumped when the peach-cheeked Amy- 
mone, the proud, the unbending, on her way to the 
baths one day slipped a flower and her own warm 
fingers for a second into the Centurion’s hand! It 
was still enough now, still as still could be, ah ! 

Was I mad? was the warm, stagnant air of the 
place turning my brain? Wondering and smiling 
to myself like that, I had kept a hand upon the 
Roman bosom where it was impossible, incredible 
that a spark of life could be after all this lapse of 
time, and yet either all my faculties were false or 
something did move within there. Down in that 
hollow chest where the soldier’s heart had once been, 
under the very palm of my hand, as I speculated on 
his remote emotions there came a thrill, a swift rapid 
pulse for a moment, then a pause; and then clear, 
unmistakable, below my fingers a throb or two ! 

It would have turned anyone’s head. It turned 


14 


LEPIDUS THE CENTURION 


mine. Away to the wall I sprang, then sidled to the 
shaft, copper coloured now with the last rays of the 
setting sun : put my toe into a crevice, and vaulted 
fairly out again into the fresh clean air as though 
invisible springs had sent me aloft. The big flag- 
stone I had coolness enough to replace — it did not 
fit so well this time; 'there was an air space all the 
way round — and then set off, dusty, bewildered, and 
— must I say it? — fairly frightened out of my phi- 
losophy, down the hill, across the meadows, and so 
home just as the dressing bell was ringing for din- 
ner, and the odour of the soup was steaming hall- 
wards from the kitchens. 


CHAPTER II 


THE SLEEPER AWAKENED 

T HE evening meal was interminably long that 
night. I was barely civil to our guests, 
who set my strung nerves jarring with their 
chatter, their interminable small talk, their village 
gossip, their recounting of scores at tennis — how 
could I take them into my confidence, or tell them 
the wonderful story that was seething in my mind? 
My dear good mother saw my absent-mindedness and 
pallor, and as I never have grown or shall grow out 
of boyhood to her, she came into my room in her 
dressing-gown after I was in bed, and administered 
two pills to me — bless her kindly heart! — two of 
those pungent family pills whereof she alone knows 
the prescription, though I and her friends under- 
stand the efficacy. It was not medicine I wanted, 
but sympathy. I sat up with my chin between my 
knees, wondering, while she gently lectured me on 
the laws of digestion and sociability, whether I could 
trust her with my secret. But though all the sympa- 
thy was there, how could I expect that dear prosaic 


1 6 LEPIDUS THE CENTURION 

lady to rise to a tale of wild imagination, a narrative 
which I, in the full fever of it, could scarcely believe ? 
No, I kept my lips shut, and meekly promising to be 
more careful of my ‘diet, and not to smoke quite so 
much in future, took my pills in silence, and let her 
turn out the lights without an idea she had not solved 
my malady. 

For an hour I tossed to and fro, while every 
shadow in the room shaped itself into the likeness 
of a gaunt, dusty Roman face, and when I eventu- 
ally dropped off to sleep it was with the firm deter- 
mination of having that vault hermetically sealed up 
on the morrow, and the biggest sapling fir on the 
estate planted on top of it. 

And when I woke up the next morning, I found 
myself equally resolved that when breakfast was 
over I would go and see that wonderful thing again. 
Yesterday I was out of sorts. The dear mother was 
right, I had been bilious and silly ; my own irregular 
pulses had filled me with ridiculous imaginings, but 
now, what with the broad seven o'clock sunshine 
streaming into my room, and those blessed pills — 
either it was they or the confidence of another day 
which made me feel physically limp but morally 
courageous — clearing mind and body simultane- 
ously — yes, I would certainly go and see the Centu- 
rion again — smoke a cigar over that poor brown 


THE SLEEPER AWAKENED 


*7 

husk of withered humanity, and once for all put 
the silly fancies of yesterday to flight. 

So, the morning meal over, I slipped away with 
one of those excuses only too familiar of late, and 
making sure no one saw me, went off boldly to the 
fir-covered knoll. The nearer it came, however, the 
slower I went, till by the time the fir-trees were 
waving like black flags, and the steep needle-strewn 
path twisted up into the shadows just ahead, I 
was going very slowly indeed. What would there 
be in the crypt now ? All yesterday’s awe came back 
to me, and I was by no means so sure as I had been 
before breakfast that the throbbings of that long 
dead heart were all fancy. I could feel them again. 
What if this was the verge of a story-book romance, 
and those throbs had indeed been a faint flicker of 
real life miraculously preserved? Suppose it had 
increased, suppose the soldier had returned to exist- 
ence, and, pushing back the slab that alone held 
him down, was stalking about the gloomy knoll in 
his rags? But this was sheer folly and cowardice. 
I straightened myself up and boldly marched into 
the clearing where the prone pine tree lay. All was 
still, nothing had altered, the silver dew was thick 
upon the ground — not a footstep had brushed it, 
while on a branch beyond, a blue wood-pigeon was 
pruning her wing feathers in the morning sunshine. 


LEPIDUS THE CENTURION 


18 

Whereat, plucking up heart of grace, I went over to 
the slab, and getting my fingers into the crack, 
pulled it up. All was well so far, a little rattle of 
gravel falling down the shaft perhaps, but not an- 
other sound. 

Peeping and peering, I got down into the abyss, 
and at a glance satisfied myself the Centurion lay as 
he did before. This was just what a sane man would 
have expected, and it proved that yesterday I was a 
fool. A little angry with myself, I went over to the 
Roman, and stood by him, while my eyes got accus- 
tomed to the light. Yes, he was just as ever, a 
trifle rounder in outline I might have said had that 
not been impossible, a little fuller in chest and waist 
under the dingy rags somehow, but the same — just 
as he had been yesterday; and greatly relieved, I 
pulled down the coverlet from his face, then started 
back with a thrill of amazement. 

The same, did I say? Why, he was as different 
as could bey The face was the same as before, and 
yet utterly, unmistakably different. Yesterday it had 
been dry and void, no more life in it than in a dead 
leaf. It had been perfect and uninjured in every re- 
spect, but a mere mask, a shred without a trace of the 
roundness of life in it. And now — I cannot express 
the extraordinary change that had taken place. It 
was still as silent, as grey as ever under its piled-up 


THE SLEEPER AWAKENED 


*9 


dust, but it was the face of a sleeper, of one im- 
mersed in profound and easy slumber, rather than 
the features of a mummy ! There could be no mis- 
take about it! I rubbed my eyes and stared, and 
rubbed and stared again. There was no illusion, 
and a grim, desperate resolve to see this mystery out 
took possession of me. I shut my mouth resolutely, 
and peeled the stranger of his coverlet. It came off 
in cobwebbed tatters that fell in shreds from my 
fingers as I held them up, and underneath it there he 
lay at last, in his ragged Roman finery, plump, yes, 
certainly plumper than he had been, full, perfect, 
well proportioned, dirty with the harmless dirt of 
ages, but above all and everything, a sleeper, and 
not that other thing I had thought him. 

Then a sort of frenzy seized me. I do not quite 
know for certain how it was, or what I did the 
next few minutes, but I know I vowed, there in that 
dismal place, that Lepidus should live again though 
I gave him half my life, and rushing to him, forget- 
ting everything, all the strangeness of it, I chafed 
his hands, rubbed his olive knees, and at last, throw- 
ing myself upon him, chest to chest, did as they do 
who rouse drowning men, working his arms and 
breathing into his nostrils with all the strength and 
tenderness in me. At last, exhausted and panting, 
streaked and smudged with the Roman’s dust, I 


20 


LEPIDUS THE CENTURION 


stepped back a space and looked intently. I had 
triumphed! With a gentle, regular movement his 
broad chest was rising and falling — you could meas- 
ure its heave by the mortared cracks between the 
opposite stones, and there was the slightest twitch- 
ing in one further toe — I shouted with unreasonable 
joy and rushing at him, whipped out my handker- 
chief (it was the Rector's black-eyed daughter Kate 
who had worked those initials fnto the corner, and 
Heaven only knows what soft and foolish hopes 
besides) and down upon my knees I went, taking 
the curly Roman head upon my left arm, while with 
my right hand wiping the dust from his cheeks as 
tenderly as a mother smooths out the fright from 
the face of her little one. “ Lepidus,” I whispered 
in his ear, “ wake ; I will have you wake ; by all the 
gods living and dead, by all you hope or fear, wake ! 
’Tis I, Lepidus, — I say it, and you shall wake ! ” 
and I shook him till the dust rose in a grey cloud 
from end to end of that marvellous being. 

As that fine impalpable powder, pungent and ag- 
gressive, entered the Roman nostrils, an extraordi- 
nary thing happened : I tell it nor more briefly than 
it came about. The whole geography of the recum- 
bent face was contorted in an instant. An earth- 
quake spasm shook cheek and chin, the dust of cen- 
turies fissured and cracked from side to side, the 


THE SLEEPER AWAKENED 


21 


broad soldier forehead puckered itself into a porten- 
tous frown, the offended eagle-nose twitched and 
twitched again, and then with a mighty explosion 
that echoed round the crypt, the Roman gave a 
sneeze that sent me with an uncontrollable cry stag- 
gering back against the furthest wall. 

Only cowards declare they are never frightened. 
Brave men often are — I am! At that particular 
moment, when the dusty grey figure on the block in 
the mid of that dim chamber showed such gross, 
such startling evidence of healthy life, I was as near 
to being scared out of my wits as I ever was. If 
there had been room for an ignominious flight, that 
course would certainly have commended itself to 
me. But the thing was between me and the narrow 
exit, and now as the sunshine gleamed down again 
between the curdling grey dust streaming upwards in 
long tongues through the orifice, I saw, with a thrill 
of wonder, Lepidus was moving; he was up, sitting 
there on the end of his own monument in a pool of 
light, kicking his heels against his own monumental 
slab. As for me, I spread my hands flat out upon 
the wall on either side and with staring eyes, invited 
the irresponsive stone and mortar to absorb me. 

Presently our eyes met, as the strange being 
began to stare about him, and I felt that anything 
was possible in that moment of exquisite expecta- 


22 


LEPIDUS THE CENTURION 


tion. But, as so often happens at a supreme crisis, 
the occasion was not equal to its opportunities. Our 
eyes met across the intervening sand, we stared at 
each other grimly for a minute, and then in a husky 
and somewhat angry voice the wonder asked, 
“ What on earth are you shouting at? ” 

I hung my head, until again the sleeper asked in 
a voice imperious in spite of its dustiness, “ I say, 
what were you shouting for? Can’t a gentleman 
lie down for an hour without being disturbed like 
this ? ” and I was constrained to reply that he had 
frightened me by sneezing. 

“ So ! ” he answered haughtily, “ it seems I am 
not at liberty to sneeze save with your leave.” 

“ No,” and I had meant to add, “ not while I was 
dusting you,” but the sentence seemed so trivial it 
died away upon my lips. 

“ Ahem ! ” said the sleeper awakened, getting 
down from his pedestal and feeling his left side for 
his empty sword belt in a suggestive way. “ I would 
have you know that I am the Centurion Lepidus, 
nephew to the Emperor Vespasianus, and Prefect for 
the moment of these beastly British hills of yours. 
It is beneath my dignity to ask who you are, but if 
you have got a sword, or can borrow one, I will 
show you that it is bad to try to stop me sneezing 


THE SLEEPER AWAKENED 


23 

where I will, and worse to wake me when I do not 
want to wake.” 

“ Lepidus,” I exclaimed, falling into familiarity 
with singular ease, “ this is worse than folly; I have 
no sword — nor you either,” pointing to his side, 
“ nor is there any quarrel between us. If you are in- 
deed all you look, alive, living — not some creation of 
my excited fancy — come out into the sunshine,” and 
as I pointed to the entrance he tottered over there. 

Never shall I forget the marvellous figure 
he exhibited, standing at the bottom of the narrow 
shaft in a flood of light. The broad strong gleams 
literally seemed to drip in gold from his hundred 
pointed rags; they anointed his curly Roman hair 
with glory, and oh, the eager upturned face they 
shone down upon! It was unwashed to the point 
of pathos, the dust of centuries lay thick upon it, 
it was masked with grime, and yet behind all that 
dingy veil was life, real life, a glint of eager bright 
eyes looking up to the blue sky in delighted wonder ; 
a strong Roman nose, a mouth proud and deter- 
mined, though the lips were caked and grey; and 
what startled me most of all was that somewhere 
I had seen that face before, there could be no doubt 
of it, somewhere I had seen that countenance, yet 
where it was my mind was too excited to remember. 


LEPIDUS THE CENTURION 


*4 

For a minute or two those upturned eyes reflected 
the strangest play of emotions; never had the glory 
of the sunlight and the splendour of this world of 
ours appealed to me so strongly as then, when I 
saw the voiceless delight of that gaunt re-visitor 
drinking them in. I could see his soul rehabilitating 
itself, as his body had done with the help of the air 
and the night dew, and then he heaved a manly great 
sigh of pleasure that split his jerkin all down the 
back, and turning to where I stood — 

“ Come on ! ” he shouted ; “ come out of the 
shadows there, you bat, and help me from this hole.” 
Obediently I went over, for already he had the most 
singular fascination for me, and putting my back 
against the wall, in a trice the Roman clambered up, 
growling a little as he did so at the stiffness of his 
joints; there was the pressure of an unsteady foot 
for a moment upon my shoulder, then up went the 
Centurion into the fresh air with marvellous agility, 
considering all the circumstances. 

Scrambling up, I joined him, and there we stood 
staring at each other. Could it be true, was it possi- 
ble, was I dreaming? Was it conceivable I had dis- 
covered, and revived, and brought up, this extraor- 
dinary treasure trove; this quaint, ridiculous, awe- 
inspiring monument of rags and dust ! I bit my lip, 
pinching myself again and again to ascertain if I 


THE SLEEPER AWAKENED 


*5 


were dreaming. No, the pinches were undoubtedly 
real, the ground was real, the trees were real ; it was 
all wildly impossible, yet there was nothing to find 
fault with in the severe logic of events. As for the 
Roman, while I wrestled with the mental question, he 
was vaguely concerned with the physical. He stared 
about him in a way half intelligent, half sleepy, 
glaring at me and the black opening of the crypt. 
Anon he would put a shaky inquisitive hand upon 
his crumbling garments, and then touch a leaf with 
such a perplexed and childish air that my sympathy 
swamped all other feeling, and so, presently, taking 
him by a hand, I led him aside and made him sit 
upon the fallen pine. Then as gently as might be, I 
put a question or two to him about his sleep, when it 
had begun, and how long it had lasted. But speak- 
ing into the hollows of that long vacant mind was 
like talking into a sea cavern — a response came back 
indeed, prompt, tumultuous even, mocking each 
time the inflections of the speaker, but there was 
no sequence behind it, and when at last, abashed at 
my own failure, my voice dropped away into silence, 
the Roman's stopped too. 

For a time we looked at each other's knees in 
awkward silence, and then an idea suddenly oc- 
curred to me — “ Would he like something to eat ? " 
I questioned with abrupt hospitality. At this the 


26 


LEPIDUS THE CENTURION 


stranger, smiting his grey palms together, swore 
brightly it was a lordly idea — a heaven-sent inspira- 
tion if he might tack on the corollary of something 
to drink, not a thimbleful, he added, like a Jew’s 
stirrup cup, but a vat of drink, a whole riverful, for 
by the souls of his uncle’s ancestors, that strange 
fellow vowed, his throat felt as if it had not been 
moistened for a thousand years ! 

Delighted to have hit on a common interest, I 
motioned to him to sit down again, and was soon 
putting my best foot forward, through the pines and 
away over the meadows on his singular errand. 
Fortunately no one was about, the lawns were 
deserted, the terrace, blazing in scarlet and gold 
with its geraniums and yellow pansies, was empty, 
and thus I got unobserved to the garden door. 
Hot and dishevelled, hardly knowing whether to 
laugh or cry at myself, I slipped through the pas- 
sages till I almost fell into the plump arms of 
Janet, the pantry maid, and to her I unburdened 
myself. “ Could she get me,” I asked guiltily, “ a 
bottle of claret?” and I implied that I would go 
pawn if Briggs the butler ever chanced to miss it. 
“ Why, of course, Mr. Louis,” she answered, when 
her first surprise at seeing me there was over. 

“ And the cold chicken pie,” I queried, “ that went 
out last night ? ” 


THE SLEEPER AWAKENED 


*7 


The cold pie, too, that black-eyed hench-maiden 
said, was at my service, though she ventured a re- 
minder lunch would be ready in an hour. To that 
I replied by saying the provender was not for 
myself, but for a hungry man I had lit upon; and 
“ Mr. Louis' ” eccentricities of mood being familiar 
to the household, the coveted provisions were soon 
in hand, and I was away with them, keeping as 
carefully to the shadows of tree or house, and avoid- 
ing even the sound of a human voice, as though I 
were a very felon. 

The nephew of the Emperor was stalking un- 
steadily up and down the little clearing, deep in 
thought, but at sight of myself and the luncheon 
basket he came towards me eagerly. Never was 
there a better caterer he said, or one more prompt, 
and forthwith we sat down under a bramble bush, 
Marcus Lepidus getting out the half-eaten chicken 
pie and inhaling its aroma just as you sniff the scent 
of violets on a bank in springtime, while I uncorked 
the Chateau Lafitte. From that flagon he poured 
himself an ample tumblerful, and it was worth a 
whole bin of a scarce vintage to see the shine in his 
eyes as he handled it. For myself, I lay back upon 
my elbows and watched with a hundred mingled 
emotions of wonder and curiosity while the Roman 
eyed the colour of that glorious juice, smelt it lov- 


28 


LEPIDUS THE CENTURION 


ingly as he toyed with his magnificent thirst, and 
then — good pagan that he was — holding the tumbler 
out at arm’s length, spilt a few drops on the pine- 
needles. “ To the deities of the place!” he mut- 
tered, and so drank. 

Never did a freshet on the heels of summer work 
a greener revolution in a stony hill channel than that 
stuff wrought in my friend. The red drops ran 
down his throat at first with a rattle like rain on 
dusty leaves, and then as the full tide of the liquor 
followed them, the generous stuff passed into every 
corner of his long-parched anatomy ; his lips caught 
something of its redness under their dust, his eyes 
brightened, his muscles twitched responsive. Higher 
and higher went the tumbler, until at last it was 
empty, and with a sigh of infinite satisfaction the 
Roman, setting the glass down, said : “ Stranger, 

I grudge the gods even their libation ! ” 

Then he took the chicken pie between his knees, 
and the moment was too intense for conversation. 
Using a knife and fork with singular adroitness 
after a little fumbling over the handles, that scion 
of ancient royalty went for the provender in a way 
that it would have done you good to watch. And as 
he ate I thought of many things. 

There was the matter of his speech, for instance. 
It had somehow never seemed strange to me that he 


THE SLEEPER AWAKENED 


29 


should speak native English until he said those few 
words in Latin as he made libation. Perhaps it 
would be better to say I had not observed he was 
speaking English till then. And on top of that was 
the singular fact that he was using, not only my 
tongue, but my idiom even. I could not fail to no- 
tice, though I may not have well expressed it to 
you — indeed, it only dawned on me myself much 
later on — that his very turns of speech, his trick and 
habit of expression were my own. Had I breathed 
into him with life the paraphernalia of life, had I 
not only roused his blood into existence by my exer- 
tions in the crypt, but lent to his mind also in some 
subtle way something of the vitality and resources of 
my own? I am aware it is an explanation explain- 
ing little, but what can I do? The bare facts are 
before you as they were before me — even more fully 
perhaps, for I necessarily write when all this has 
been subjected to the cogitation of time — whereas 
there in the wooded knoll astraddle of a pine log, 
I could but chew the stump of my Havana and 
roughly patch together the raw ends of speculation, 
while my noble Roman hunted for liver wings and 
sent hard-boiled egg and kissing crust hurrying 
down his throat in joyous indifference to my 
perplexities. 

A right good meal he made of it. He worked 


3 o 


LEPIDUS THE CENTURION 


round that pie as a seaman boxes a compass ; it had 
been intended for a dozen people, and it was scarcely 
enough for one. Every now and then as he finished 
a drumstick, or pitched a clean-picked skip-bone 
into the ferns, the Centurion would stick his knife, 
point downwards, into the earth, and help himself 
to a big draught of claret; it made me hungry and 
thirsty to look at him, and by a very human associ- 
ation of ideas I presently pulled out my watch, and 
noticed with dismay that lunch would be on the 
table in the Manor House in ten minutes. Here was 
a complication. Ideas of politeness to guests, which 
innumerable copy-book headings had implanted in 
me, and my dear mother's teachings had assiduously 
nourished, forbade me to stay away from the meal 
— I could not take Lepidus home, unannounced, un- 
washed, as he was, and yet would he consent to 
remain behind ? 

In renewed anxiety I glanced at him, and saw 
fate had come to the rescue: the chicken pie had 
done its work, the Chateau Lafitte had numbed his 
senses, and the curly Roman head was nodding. 
Another minute and Lepidus reeled in his mossy 
seat, his eyes dimmed with happy sleepiness, and 
before I could do or say anything, he had subsided 
peacefully amid the bracken, graceful even in negli- 
gence, and was sleeping the deep untroubled sleep of 
a well-fed babe. 


CHAPTER III 


AND REHABILITATED 

T HE obvious opinion at our luncheon table that 
day was that I scarcely fulfilled the qualities 
of a courteous host. My right-hand neigh- 
bour, a very charming girl, to whom I had devoted a 
good deal of indolent time of late, refused my prof- 
fered lobster salad for someone else’s collared tongue, 
though I know she preferred the salad, and a general 
tendency existed to take my sallies in the direction of 
remorseful civility with reserve, polite but impressive. 

As for my mother, she expressed her opinions 
and authority while the cheese was passing round 
by arranging a tennis set, and allotting me to a 
partner without asking my opinion, or even looking 
in my direction. So there was nothing for it. I got 
into my flannels and played a hectic game, ferocious 
and negligent by turns, expecting all the time to 
see the grey figure of my Centurion stalk out of the 
shrubberies; and it was only when the long cedar 
shadows were beginning to creep across the lawns 
that I got away. 

Lepidus was awake when we met ten minutes 
3 1 


32 


LEPIDUS THE CENTURION 


afterwards, awake and vastly improved by his sleep 
and meal. He had filled out amazingly, his flesh 
had re-formed, his tightened muscles had drawn his 
stalwart figure into shape, while the lean, hungry 
look had gone in great measure from his face — 
where, where had I seen that countenance before? 
— in fact, he was twice the person he had been, and 
as lively as a kid. 

He had obviously been using the few moments 
between his rest and my coming in investigating his 
ragged apparel, and on my approach he was twisting 
and turning and examining himself with an air of 
most comical perplexity. Finally, having minutely 
inspected his exceedingly scanty rags, he turned 
abruptly in answer to my suggestion that he should 
come home with me, and asked — 

“ Any ladies at your table, stranger ? ” 

“ Yes,” I answered. 

“ Well,” said the Centurion, “ unless I sit 
amongst the ragged beggars in your porch, which 
all the gods forefend ” — this with a toss of his curly 
head that shook out a cloud of dust — “ if I do not sit 
amongst the slaves, I shall have to come as a naked 
Apollo — will they mind? ” 

“ It would be unusual,” was my answer, and then 
— catching the gaiety of that open-faced stranger, 
who from the first moment I knew him to the last, 


—AND REHABILITATED 


33 


was always equally ready to smile or fight, to take 
the rough or the smooth of chance with the same 
brave front — I burst into laughter, and he laughed 
too, a frank, hearty laugh, until the roosting wood- 
pigeons left the firs overhead for a quieter neigh- 
bourhood; and somehow that mutual outpour put us 
in better mood with each other. 

“ Look here, Lepidus,” I said, calling his attention 
by a little twitch at his vest, which promptly came 
away with all the sleeve up to the elbow, “ sorry to 
spoil your underwear like this, but the fact is — 
well, you badly want a change of clothes and a wash 
and brush up ; suppose you come down to the shrub- 
bery in front of the house. I will bring you there a 
long ulster of mine, and afterwards smuggle you 
into the house; — fact is, you know, you are not 
quite fit for good society till you have had a wash.” 

Lepidus agreed to my criticisms in his large 
and gracious way, and just as the light was fading, 
the stems of the pines beginning to stand out flam- 
ing copper red in the sun’s last rays now going be- 
hind a distant hill, we, after carefully covering the 
crypt mouth over, went off slowly down a dim, fir- 
scented path twisting away to where, near the foot 
of the hill, was a long sandy scarp beloved of rabbits, 
the path cutting through it between two miniature 
cliffs of lichened rocks. 


34 


LEPIDUS THE CENTURION 


“ Hum ! ” said the Roman, coming to a stop as 
he eyed these stones, “ this is funny : when I was 
last here the valleys seemed twice as deep, and the 
water ran chest-high round these crags; why, this 
was my favourite bathing place, and often I have 
taken a header from this very rock — you must have 
had an extremely dry season this year, comrade ? ” 
and, as though I were personally responsible for the 
altered geography of centuries, I hung my head and 
muttered that it had been dry. 

Then, when we crossed the foot-bridge over the 
meadow stream the singular being at my elbow 
would have turned off sharp to the left, whereas 
our Manor lay to the right. “ Not that way,” I 
said, touching him on the shoulder. 

“ Not that way ! ” he answered, “ nonsense, the 
villa's under the shadow of that hill there, or I’m a 
Briton,” and looking where he pointed through the 
grey wisps of rising mist I recognised with a start 
that he was pointing towards those flats where, as 
previously mentioned, we from time to time turned 
up ancient pottery and bricks, the odds and ends of a 
civilisation which had set many a long century ago. 
It was no good angering him, so I replied soothingly 
that anyhow he, as guest to-night, was coming my 
way; and he was much too civil even in his rags to 


—AND REHABILITATED 


35 


argue it. Still I am bound to say I felt uncomfort- 
able, and as he stalked along by my side, could not 
help taking a nervous look now and again to see if 
it were possible to discern in orthodox ghost fashion 
the opposite bushes through his outline. But no! 
whoever he was, from wherever he came, he stood 
solid and substantial; the meadow-grass crushed 
under his strong feet, bats fluttered softly in his 
wake, for flies he unsettled, his broad outline, as like 
my own as could be, made a sharp-edged blot upon 
the russet and lavender of the evening sky. No! 
he was undoubtedly material by every ordinary test, 
so there was nothing but to wait for what would 
happen next. 

I got him up to the shrubbery surrounding our 
house, and not without secret misgivings induced 
him to remain under cover till something decent in 
the way of clothes could be procured. Thereon, that 
eccentric person threw himself down in his tattered 
finery in a rustic arbour, crossed his legs, began 
leisurely chewing a stalk of honeysuckle, while with 
an easy wave of his hand he indicated that I was at 
liberty to depart upon my errand. 

Away I went over the tennis-courts and gravelled 
terraces. They were just lighting up in the house as 
I entered; the butler was scolding the under-foot- 


36 LEPIDUS THE CENTURION 

man at the half open dining-room door; the house- 
maids, with hot-water cans and clean towels, were 
on the back stairs as I shamefacedly sneaked up 
them. Good Heavens! what would they all say to 
that thing I had back in the garden there? How 
would he behave? Was I wise, after all, in bringing 
such a waif into a civilised and decorous household ? 
But what was the good of asking that question? I 
already knew enough of Lepidus to be pretty well 
sure that if I did not bring him here he would cer- 
tainly come himself, so I reached down from my 
pegs a pair of trousers, a long woolly ulster, with 
a grey wideawake cap, and rolling them up as 
small as possible, started downstairs again. In the 
middle of the tennis lawn two white female figures 
came towards me with obvious agitation, and my 
cousin Alice, the younger of the two, broke out as 
soon as she was within whispering distance — 

“ Oh, Louis, we have had such a fright ! There is 
a tramp down by the summer-house; do go down and 
drive him away.” 

“ A tramp ? ” I said, with my spirit sinking within 
me. 

“ Yes, and an Italian — so ragged and dirty, and 
such a horrible-looking wretch.” 

“ And so horribly impertinent ! ” chimed in the 
elder lady, who I may observe was the wife ot the 


—AND REHABILITATED 


37 

Bishop of Pewchester. “ He actually attempted to 
kiss me ! ” 

I groaned in an agony of spirit ; it was Lepidus, of 
course. No one but a red-hot heathen with no fear 
of bell, book, or candle before him would attempt 
to kiss a bishop’s wife at sight, and a swift vision of 
the horror of my mother, who venerated the Church 
without regard to sex, should such a sacrilegious 
idea ever reach her ears, flashed upon me. 

“ Don’t say anything about it,” I whispered 
hastily ; “ get indoors, and I will go and see this 
tramp of yours,” and as they gladly disappeared 
down the terrace walk, I hurried on again, tumbling 
headlong over a croquet hoop in my agitation, and 
eventually finding the soldier as I left him, offen- 
sively cool and happy. 

“ There : get into those,” was my angry remark, 
throwing down the garments before that noble 
Roman, “ and if you are coming up to the house, 
for goodness’ sake put on some decency and good 
manners with them.” 

“ Oh, that reminds me,” observed Lepidus light- 
heartedly, as he held my trousers up towards the 
saffron evening sky in a vain endeavour to discover 
for himself which was front and which back, “ that 
reminds me — such a buxom nymph came by just 
now, and when I stepped out of the shadows, intent 


38 LEPIDUS THE CENTURION 


on giving her a chaste salute — you know, comrade, 
’tis but what a sprightly matron looks for from a 
civil gentleman — she fairly screamed ! ” 

“ You are enough, Lepidus, as you stand, to 
freeze the coquetry in the most brazen hussy that 
ever lived.” 

“ Ah, I forgot the dirt and rags ; but surely they 
could see me through them ? ” 

“ Dimly,” I answered ; “ however, never mind 
that now ; button those braces, and stop talking non- 
sense, like a good fellow. There, on with the coat, 
and then the cap — no, stupid! not like that — right 
way forward, so — now take my arm and come 
along.” 

Well, at last he was presentable, a soft felt cap 
pulled down over his eyes, and a long ulster to his 
ankles; and drawing his hand through my arm, I 
led him over the dewy lawn towards the streaming 
lights of the house, conjuring him as we went to 
remember my admonitions and behave rationally, 
and though he, laughing lightly, promised, I more 
than doubted his ability. 

Going in by the side door, as we were drying 
our feet on the mat, who should come running up 
but my baby kinswoman Flossie Bum, and her 
terrier. She rushed for me with a cry of welcome 
as usual but, ten yards away, both dog and child 


—AND REHABILITATED 


39 


came to a sudden stop. They stared and stared at 
the stranger, whose broad back was still turned to 
them, then the terrier, a plucky little beast in gen- 
eral, clapped his tail between his legs and bolted so 
precipitously up the passage that he nearly spilled our 
second footman, who was coming from the pantry 
with a tray of glasses. The little maid however 
stood her ground, her eyes dilated and her golden 
curls flickering in the lamp-light. She stood her 
ground, staring fixedly at the uncommon-looking 
stranger and then the sonsie little maid of six fled 
sheer into my arms and nestling there, pointed a 
rosy finger at my friend, and burst out — 

“ That's not a proper man, that's not a proper 
man ! " and glaring at him through the tangles of 
her hair, whispered, “ where did he come from, 
uncle? Is he an ogre? " 

“ Just a friend of mine, sweetheart," I answered 
uneasily, unlinking her velvet hands from about my 
neck while gently putting her down ; “ just a friend 
of mine come to stay with us for a day or two: 
to-morrow you shall see for yourself, but now go to 
nurse like a dear, and if you can keep that little 
tongue of yours quiet, and not talk nonsense, per- 
haps I will bring you up some sweets when dinner's 
done." Away she went, with many backward 
glances, and I led my Roman to the stairs. 


40 


LEPIDUS THE CENTURION 


“ Hullo ! what’s this,” exclaimed that man ac- 
customed to open-courted villas, “ are we to perch 
with the pigeons on the roof ? ” But I assured him 
it was all right — my rooms were above — and after 
inspecting the staircase interestedly, he followed me 
with a shrug of his broad shoulders. At the top 
we met Mary, the under-housemaid, coming down, 
whereon the Centurion having eyed her approvingly, 
crowded her and the hot-water cans most outrage- 
ously — ay, and as the red and frightened girl ran 
downstairs my latest guest leant over the banisters, 
the laughing Roman eyes following her to the very 
basement. “ What will the mater say to-morrow? ” 
I thought to myself, as I led that soldier along the 
corridor — the mater who had brought me up so 
well that I dare not look even the plainest cook in 
the eyes. A bishop’s wife half kissed in the shrub- 
bery, a housemaid squeezed in the passage, before 
we have even dressed for dinner — it was awful ! 


CHAPTER IV 


SOME DINNER AND AN ALARM 

M Y own rooms, a little apart from the main 
corridor, looked out on the front. Across 
the passage stood a spare-room where an 
occasional bachelor friend could be put up, with a 
bath adjoining, both being kept constantly ready, 
of course, and thither I led the way. Opening the 
guest-door we went in, and in my nervousness, not 
being particularly thoughtful, without any warning 
I turned up the little brass knob by the door, with 
the result that in a second, half-a-dozen electric 
lights, each behind its shield of soft green silk and 
lace, sprang into light. Lepidus fairly jumped with 
amazement. A dazzling flash of lightning in the 
open would not have scared him half so much. He 
blinked and winked, staring open-mouthed for a 
moment or two, then gasped out, “ How did you 
work that, stranger? ” — it was a little pleasantness of 
his that I was the stranger, and he the indigenous 
owner of the time and place — “ that’s marvellous ! ” 
and he went up to examine the lamps with incredu- 
lous awe on his dirty but handsome face. 

4i 


42 


LEPIDUS THE CENTURION 


Then he had to know how it was done, and in the 
exuberance of his delight turned the light on and off, 
until out of sheer giddiness, I had to beg him to de- 
sist. When I rang for the maid, and more bath 
towels, my Roman came over minutely to examine 
the electric-bell knob, and while my back was turned, 
rang it again and again, until our staid old house- 
keeper downstairs nearly had a fit, and housemaids, 
buttons, footmen, and bootboys came tumbling over 
each other up the stairs, under the impression that 
the house was on fire at the very least. 

Pacifying them, I, unwarned by experience, sent 
Mary in to fill the bath, while I went across the 
passage to find Lepidus a suit of clothes. I had not 
been gone a minute when I heard the girl exclaim, 
and rushing headlong back, found the room in 
pitchy darkness, and at the next step cannoned 
heavily against the flying maid, who was retreating 
as precipitously as I was entering. We were still 
leaning breathlessly against the opposite sides of the 
door when the Centurion was graciously pleased to 
turn on the lights again, and to laugh gleefully at 
the sight of our discomfiture. I dared not trust my- 
self to ask how he had frightened the girl, but sent 
her away, and with a heavy sigh, threw down the 
suit of evening clothes upon the bed and tried to 


SOME DINNER AND AN ALARM 43 

explain the enormity of his behaviour to the Roman, 
but he was much too light-hearted to be impressed. 
At last in despair I showed him the bath, and he was 
astounded to see hot and cold water flowed at a 
touch. 

“ Well/’ he said, “ that is curious. I have bathed 
at Aquae Tusculi, and taken a course at Ostia for 
the rheumatism, but this is the most convenient 
spring that ever came out of a rock : is it 
chalybeate? ” 

“ No,” I answered grimly. 

“ Then perhaps it is sulphurous ? ” 

“ No/’ again I said, “ but it is what some other 
things are not — it is clean. Now, Lepidus, just get 
out of those rags, and when you have hidden them 
at the back of this cupboard, jump in here and scrub 
and rub for all you are worth. There is only 
twenty minutes to dinner, and a week's work be- 
fore you, apparently," I observed, consulting my 
watch. 

“ What is that? 99 said the visitor, pointing to my 
fifty-guinea hunter. 

“ Never mind to-night, but, like a good fellow, 
jump in, and when you are ready, if you will call, I 
will lend you a hand with the clothes, for they may 
be a bit strange at first." Then glancing round' 


44 


LEPIDUS THE CENTURION 


fugitively, to see if there were any possibilities of 
mischief to be put out of his way, I left him and 
hurried off to my own room. 

My dressing was interrupted only twice : once by 
the Roman sending in to say he wanted some wine 
to put in his bath, a pagan fancy which added five 
years to the age of our butler when he heard of it, 
and secondly, to ask if he could not have two 
“ slaves ” to rub him down. I returned an evasive 
answer to both questions, and shortly afterwards 
(Lepidus having refused my proffered assistance, 
through the door), joined my mother’s guests in the 
inner hall. 

We were a pleasant party. About a dozen men 
and women in all. A bishop and his wife; an Indian 
general; a vivacious widow, who knew as much 
about the world and more about India than he did, 
and would not have been averse, we thought, to 
adding a soldierly prefix to her name. Then there 
was a married sculptor and his wife; two bachelor 
students from Oxford, one of them reading for the 
Church; and a brace of tennis-playing damsels, 
whom my dear, kind, match-making mother had 
especially selected as being suitable to the presump- 
tive matrimonial needs of the foresaid young men — 
altogether a cheerful party, if somewhat conven- 
tional in tone. 


SOME DINNER AND AN ALARM 45 


How would they take Lepidus ? I tried to 
do my duty as host, and talk lightly to each in 
turn as we awaited the announcement of dinner, 
but my head was giddy with the swift sequence of 
the last few hours. Had I been a fool in bringing 
the Centurion to the house at all, and now that he 
was here, ought I to turn him loose, as it were, on 
this angelical sheepfold without adequate warning 
or preparation? I had told them, it is true, that a 
friend of mine had arrived suddenly and would join 
us at dinner, a relative of Italian extraction I had 
said, knowing very little of English ways, and had 
tried to hint that they must be prepared to put up 
with a few little eccentricities. But was this enough ? 
To what abyss was I dragging a decorous house- 
hold ? Ought I not to have made a frank confession 
of my “ find ” ? Still debating that knotty point 
in my mind, and listening inattentively to his Lord- 
ship of Pewchester, who, with his hands under his 
episcopal coat tails, and one foot on the marble 
fender was laboriously explaining the causes which 
had led up to his recent differences of opinion with 
his rural dean on the subject of benefactions, my 
heart sank guiltily when a footman came in and 
drew me aside. 

“ What is wrong, Brooks ? ” I asked. 

“ Oh, nothing much, sir,” replied the man, look- 


46 LEPIDUS THE CENTURION 


in g a little nervous, “ only the electric lights in No. 
io, sir : they are going on and off in a way we can- 
not understand, and there’s quite a crowd in the gar- 
den watching them.” 

Making hurried apologies to the Church, I rushed 
off after Brooks, down a passage and out into the 
garden, abutting on the rear of the house, by a glass 
door. It was true enough : there was a crowd fifty 
yards lower down — all the stable men, ostlers, horse 
boys and gardeners on the estate, with a sprinkling 
of female servants, their aprons over their heads, 
were collected there, staring up at a pair of windows 
that I knew were those apportioned to Lepidus. 
And from those opened curtained casements came 
every few seconds a twin blaze of light as all the 
electric lamps were suddenly put on at the full — a 
glare lighting up the laughing faces below, and 
flooding the leaves of the walnut trees in the court- 
yard with gold, and then an interval of murky dark- 
ness illuminated again by another outburst of bril- 
liancy. 

It was that off-shoot of Imperial Rome, of course, 
there was no one else within twenty miles fool 
enough to waste his time in such a way, and with 
rage in my heart I turned back into the house, 
rushed upstairs, and bursting unceremoniously into 
No. io — which happened that moment to be in 


SOME DINNER AND AN ALARM 47 


gloom — “ Lepidus ! ” I said bitterly, “ are you mad? 
A child would be ashamed to go on like this. Don’t 
you see the men are laughing at you down below? 
They will think you are out of your mind. Why 
don’t you dress and come down to dinner like a man 
in his senses ? ” 

“ I am sorry,” said a smooth, pleasant voice from 
the darkness, “but these lights of yours are so fas- 
cinating, and the bath too! I have been turning 
your taps on and off for the last twenty minutes, 
and am not half satisfied yet,” and suiting the action 
to the word, he put on the electric lamps again. 

As the light flashed up, and the radiance filled 
every corner of the room, I saw before me, not the 
dusty mummy I still somehow expected, but a stal- 
wart fellow in modern evening dress, so like to me 
in the main, that I fairly staggered against the door- 
post, and stood gazing at him in blank astonishment. 
Like, I have told you before, we were, but this was 
my reflection, my copy, the very mirage of myself 
— a little paler perhaps, a thought larger in frame, 
a trifle stiffer in bearing, with hair not cut like mine 
— and yet myself, my very, very self! He had 
bathed and washed and come forth rejuvenated — 
who could have dreamt there was such a healthy skin 
under that crust of centuries ? He had got very cor- 
rectly into a suit of my own evening black ; the hand- 


48 LEPIDUS THE CENTURION 


kerchief that dangled from his pocket flaunted my 
initials, the socks showing above his patent shoes 
were twin with those I wore; he was the very copy 
of me, and I gazed at him, as well I might, with 
speechless amazement for a minute or two. 

This, then, was the meaning of the strange famil- 
iarity of his face — dull and slow that I had been not 
to recognise it ! I covered my eyes with my hand for 
a minute, and every incident of the last forty-eight 
hours rolled back before me — the mound under the 
fir-boughs, how I lay chest to chest with that dusty 
thing in the forgotten crypt, filling his shrunken 
frame with my breath, and his empty mind with 
thought and speech by the very ardour of my desire 
that he should live again. I remembered the dim, un- 
comfortable resemblance he bore, even then, to some- 
thing I knew as well as I knew myself; I remem- 
bered the finding of the sepulchre, the very book I 
was reading just before — ay! and the very passage 
in that book wherein an old philosopher, rummag- 
ing the wastes of human thought for any scraps 
of truth the gods might have dropped there, wrote 
how one man lived many lives — was it possible I 
and this other were one, was it possible? — But my 
mind was too confused to reason, and, before I could 
think any more about it, the Roman’s hand was on 
my shoulder, and speaking in that charming way he 


SOME DINNER AND AN ALARM 49 

could use when he chose, he was asking lightly what 
was amiss. “ Been waiting too long for dinner, 
comrade? Jove! you look as though you had — 
just come and see yourself,” and he led me over to 
a tall glass by the window until we stood there side 
by side, the duplicates surely of one common indi- 
viduality, staring hard into that polished mirror. 

Had I waited too long for dinner? was my liver 
out of order? As I stared it seemed to me that our 
two identities ran together on that surface, blended 
like drops of rain upon a window pane, and all the 
reflections of the common-place about us stranded 
out like mist, to rise again into the likeness of 
a Roman street, a street of porticoes and wide pave- 
ments, a deep blue sky overhead, and dirt in the 
marble gutters; yonder a peep of brown Tiber water 
through the olive trees, while nearer by, in the busy 
foreground, two-wheeled carts creaking down the 
open, and men and women, slaves and freemen, 
jostled each other — it was only a flash, a thought, 
a breath upon the glass, a glint of a sunny ancient 
street, bright and busy, yet though I had never been 
out of England in all my life, every detail of that 
place was familiar to me, every incident of the 
motley throng was of everyday knowledge ! 

“ Well, come along,” said my friend, “ you will 
never cure an empty stomach by staring, and there 


50 


LEPIDUS THE CENTURION 


are better remedies somewhere below, unless my 
nose deceives me/’ whereon he led me arm-in-arm 
into the corridor, and so downstairs to the hall 
where our guests were still waiting. Beautiful, if 
quaint, was the sweeping bow with which he saluted 
the company on the threshold of that great black oak 
ante-room. Such a bow had never before been seen 
in Caster Manor: it was all-embracing, at once 
gracious, yet dignified; it was the sort of salutation 
an emperor might have made on coming into the 
presence of a group of captive kings. It was out- 
landish undoubtedly, yet somehow you could not 
smile at it. The unfaltering ease of that stately 
bending conveyed the silent certainty of equality, 
the unhurried elegance of the recovery seemed like 
that of one who was certain beforehand that, be they 
who they might, he saluted no better man than he 
who came amongst us. My dear, simple-minded 
mother even attempted something like a reflex of 
that salutation, it was so fetching; while all the 
others bobbed and blinked in polite awkwardness, 
and then, when it was over, there was Marcus 
Lepidus standing in our ancestral hall eyeing the 
company with an air of the kindliest patronage. 

Of course I took him round the circle, introducing 
him individually to those frigid elders, and in an 
amazingly short space of time he was at his ease — 


SOME DINNER AND AN ALARM 51 

long, in fact, before the others were — smiling his 
spacious smile, and answering the veiled wonder of 
their questions with a general success which made 
me marvel. At times he tripped, no doubt. Thus 
I overheard the Bishop’s wife say — 

“ You came by the express, of course, Mr. — ah — 
Lepidus ? ” 

“ Oh yes,” said the Centurion, and thinking of 
mounted military stages and that horse “ express ” 
he alone knew of, he went on cheerfully, “ and a 
rough time we had of it, too ! We got off into a bog 
twice ” 

“ Into a bog ! ” gasped the episcopal dame. 

“Yes, and when we got out of that it was as 
black as our mother- wolf’s mouth; we could not see 
where we were going, and plunged headlong into a 
river ” 

“ Good gracious me ! ” gasped my mother. 

“ And when we scrambled out of that, we got 
lost in the copses just outside the town, and went 
snorting and plunging about till we caught a sight 
of the station lights by the merest chance; in 
fact ” 

“ In fact, sir, the only wonder is there was not 
an accident,” observed the Bishop’s wife coldly. 
“ Cecilia, dear ” — this to my parent — “ will you 
come and tell me about your Dorcas meeting last 


LEPIDUS THE CENTURION 


5 * 

week? I hear it was very successful.” Nothing 
daunted, my Roman bowed, and went on to the next 
group, and everywhere I saw the fascination of his 
presence light the eyes of his listeners, while rising 
wonder, amusement, and surprise flitted over their 
countenances. 

All went reasonably well, until presently, far away 
in the corridors the gong sounded for dinner. You 
know that long, low muffled sound ? It appeals both 
to the hollow interior of the expectant diner, if I 
may be forgiven for saying it, and to his mental im- 
agination, should he possess any. It is a singularly 
lugubrious sound, and no people with the slightest 
sense of compatibility would ever let themselves 
be called to a cheerful festival by such a means ; but 
there it is! That brassy rumour rolled sullenly up 
into the hall, coming, it might have been, from a 
mile away, so hollow it sounded ; it gathered volume 
and strength, until the house seemed full of it, and 
as the first knell died away, and suppressed gladness 
shone upon the faces of our guests, my Centurion 
leapt to his feet : “ Hullo ! ” he cried, excitedly 

turning to me, “ did you hear that? — a British war- 
drum, as I live ! ” 

“ Nonsense, man! ” I answered; “ it is only ” 

“ Don’t tell me what it is ! Haven’t I listened 


SOME DINNER AND AN ALARM 53 

to war-drums since I first scrambled down from my 
mother’s knees? — to the ramparts, you laggard, to 
the ramparts, I say, or the barbarians will be on us 
before we can strike a blow ! ” and quick as thought, 
my plucky Roman leapt to a trophy of arms upon 
the nearest wall, tore down a broad-bladed German 
boar spear and rushed towards the curtained entry. 
Just as he approached it, our portly butler drew 
aside the arras to announce soup was on the table, 
and there he met the German steel! Blue, sharp, 
and a good eighteen inches long, it glistened for a 
second against the full rotundity of his white waist- 
coat, and with a yell of terror he leapt back, catch- 
ing his foot in the curtain and falling heavily among 
the folds. Away went Lepidus along the corridor, 
and down came brass cornice pole and rings upon 
the bald scalp of the luckless servitor with a crash 
which set our teeth on edge, and gave him a worse 
two days’ headache than my mother’s most experi- 
mental port. 

“ Lepidus ! Lepidus ! ” I cried, leaping over the 
wreck and rushing after the truant, “ come back, 
you fool! Lepidus, you are mad — ” and so on 
down the corridor, across the pantry, through the 
servants’ yard, and out into the open starlight, where 
I fairly ran him down, panting and hot, his fine eyes 


54 


LEPIDUS THE CENTURION 


dilated with martial eagerness, and his better ear 
bent groundwards to catch the tramp of those 
armed men who he thought were coming on us. 

It was only with the greatest difficulty I got him 
back into the house, and made him look at the gong 
as it hung on its bamboo framework near the butler’s 
room. 

“ So that is all it was,” he said, indignantly star- 
ing at the little disc. “ Well, if folk will have a 
battle-call sounded to tell them dinner is ready, sane 
men are bound to reach for their weapons. Here, 
you pink-legged slave, hang that up again,” and 
tossing his boar spear — sharp end first — to a fright- 
ened footman who stood near, he thrust his arm 
through mine, and as we walked back towards the 
dining-room, asked in my ear — was it question, was 
it affirmation? — asked whether I had ever heard 
a British war-drum sound. 

Had I ? Yes ! — at the touch of that strange hand 
on mine, and the whisper of that voice in my ear, 
it seemed as though the long forgotten leapt into 
remembrance; the tough walls of that old Manor 
house shredded out as fine as summer mist, and 
blew away from before my reeling brain ! I was on 
the grassy rampart of a Roman camp; on the low 
hills opposite, the dawn was hanging like the lip of 
a ghostly sea. The near glens were purple in the 


SOME DINNER AND AN ALARM 55 

shadows, and the willow bushes were shivering 
along the stream in the breath of the coming morn- 
ing. And then I heard it — heard the dull wail of 
hatred and oppression go up from the trembling 
British drumheads, and mount and mount, till my 
inmost fibres seemed tremulous with the sound; then 
listened while it died away again, listened while 
the bitter and sullen tocsin rolled over the peat hags 
and faded away on the folds of the brooding 
shadows. Ay, and I saw them — saw the thin yellow 
flush over the eastern moorlands beaded with 
foemen, saw the glint on their brass, and the 
plated chariot-poles twinkling like streaks of 
fire, saw their helms gleam, and the fine small 
lightning from their spear-points lead down into 
the hollows! Behind me, the Roman camp started 
to life as I stared: I heard the phalanx wake with 
a single long-drawn sigh in the darkness ; the clatter 
of steel on steel, as a sleepy fool stumbled over his 
armour; then the cry of a startled child, the bark 
of a dog, and the voice of a Tuscan sergeant cursing 
his men in a guttural whisper. I saw the foemen 
swing out right and left upon the heather, and the 
Roman eagles spread their gold wings overhead 
on the last of the black night-time. I heard my 
heart thumping — then the roar of the British onset 
— fifteen years of shame and bloodshed and terror 


56 LEPIDUS THE CENTURION 

expressed in the yell of a moment, and — drowning 
its echo — a wild derisive shout of defiance and 
welcome from the throats of the Romans behind me ! 

“ My dear, will you please pass the celery salt? ” 
said the mildly reproachful voice of my mother, and 
looking up from my reverie with a guilty start, I 
found I was seated at dinner at the head of our table, 
her ample ladyship of Pewchester on my right, a 
buxom matron on my left, my dear kind parent far 
away through the vistas of wax candles and fern, 
and Lepidus, that splendid waif from the past, near 
her, beamingly gracious and discoursing abundantly 
— good Heavens ! what might he not be discoursing 
on? 


CHAPTER V 


THE CENTURION PLAYS CENTAUR 

I T is usual to speak of early rising as a Spartan 
habit. Had you known my Roman you would 
have altered the geographical equivalent of the 
virtue ! Marcus Lepidus could not sleep after cock- 
crow, and what is more, if the cocks were not punc- 
tual in the discharge of that duty he was quite capa- 
ble of going down at the proper hour to inquire into 
the cause of their remissness. 

The first morning after I had introduced him into 
the house (and a lovely autumn morning it was, by 
the way) the idea seized him to bathe in the lake 
before anybody else was astir. So he let himself 
out in the dewing on to the terrace walk in a pair 
of sleeping trousers and a blue velvet smoking coat 
I had lent, and with a bath towel over his arm, went 
down to the weed-grown pool. There, alone in the 
splendid sunshine, naked and not in the least 
ashamed, he frightened the moorhens from their 
earliest meal to his hearts content. Then he saunt- 
ered back over the lawns, glittering with a thousand 
dew-drops flashing gold and blue, the mavises on 
57 


58 LEPIDUS THE CENTURION 

the green pine steeples flooding the moist coppices 
with the glamour of their songs as he passed, and 
hungry, as all healthy bathers should be, that fol- 
lower of the imperial standards broke into our larder 
through the kitchen window, and set to work to re- 
fresh himself with common plebeian British bread 
and dripping. 

Thus it came about that our stout old cook, who 
had been in the family thirty years, gave us notice, 
for when she came down from her room (sleepy, 
and perhaps a trifle irritable, as aged dames of her 
standing will be at such an hour), and opened the 
foresaid larder door, a semi-naked gentleman, in- 
sufficiently arrayed in flannel trousers, the fore- 
said jacket, his abundant black hair rolled up in a 
bath towel, and a large slice of bread and dripping 
in his hand, fell out upon her. 

“ This is what comes,” she said, as she recovered 
consciousness twenty minutes afterwards on the 
horsehair sofa in the servants’ hall, “ this is what 
comes of master’s bringing wild Indians into the 
house ” — to that good lady, everybody who had not 
been born within the British seas was a “ wild 
Indian ” — “ I, at my time of life to be knocked into 
the fender the fust thing in the morning, and scared 
out of my senses by a gentleman as ought to have 
been waiting upstairs in a Christian way for Mary 


THE CENTURION PLAYS CENTAUR 59 

to take him his morning tea, instead of prowling 
about my kitchen for bread and dripping.” And 
so Lepidus, the nephew of the Emperor, cost us the 
services of our dear cockney dame before the sun 
was over the plum trees in the kitchen garden that 
morning. 

But little the Centurion grieved when, strolling 
about the garden an hour later, I pointed out the 
result of his escapade. 

“ After all,” he said jovially,. “ what is one 
slave more or less? Why, my uncle Marius fed 
his lampreys with his stupidest bondsmen; ay, and 
when his own supply ran short one day, he borrowed 
a favourite butler from a neighbour, and on that 
sullen fool asking for his domestic back, Marius sent 
him round a dish of those fat and dainty fishes! — 
a right down jolly fellow was my uncle, the best 
hand at a brew you ever saw, and hard to match 
for humour.” And that light-hearted soldier, pluck- 
ing my mother’s best rose for his buttonhole from 
the verandah trellis, led me laughingly in to 
breakfast. 

There he was, as graciously irresistible as I was 
supine and helpless. My star seemed to have set in 
the splendour of that southern sun that had ridden 
suddenly into our skies. Never in my life had I felt 
so worthless, so washed out, so mentally sapped and 


6o 


LEPIDUS THE CENTURION 


soulless, as I did at this time. As for the Roman, 
he grew fat on my leanness, he waxed magnificent 
by my eclipse, and the strangest thing was that I 
recognised there at the breakfast-table, as I had 
done before so often in his talk, my own figures of 
speech, and in his knowledge (often blunderingly 
drawn upon) my very own experiences. In fact, 
there could not be any doubt to me, as I stared 
and listened, that Lepidus was using my mental 
raiment as certainly as he was inhabiting my best 
tweed suit, and though of the two perhaps the home- 
spun fitted him the best, yet, as I have said, he did 
marvellously well in both. So much I frankly 
perceived, while, for the rest, I could but sit and 
marvel to see the old knowledge, and the borrowed 
new, jostling each other with varying fortunes in 
his mind. Everything was strange to him. The 
damask tablecloth with a pattern that was light or 
dark, according as you viewed it up or down the 
table, was a more magic web than any Penelope 
ever wove. The silver cruet seemed a chemist's 
shop, which he turned admiringly upon his thumb 
without the slightest knowledge of the ingredients 
within. When they offered him a fricassee of duck 
he helped himself with his fingers, and the sausages 
on toast he declared were the most singular kind of 
fish that ever swam. Then again, when my mother 


THE CENTURION PLAYS CENTAUR 61 


asked him whether he would take tea or coffee, he 
paused upon those unfamiliar words, and said with 
studied graciousness, “ A little of both.” She gave 
him tea without the shadow of a smile, and sending 
the sugar to him, he courteous in everything, took 
half-a-dozen lumps upon his plate, sucking them one 
by one as occasion offered with the frankest 
simplicity. 

And it was all done so charmingly, he was so 
obviously at his ease and happy, that no one laughed. 
His very blunders were endearing in the shine of his 
gracious presence. Yet Lepidus could bare his teeth 
at times for all his smoothness, and under that velvet 
manner, a word now and then would show that a 
touch of the old Imperial blood still tingled in his 
veins. We had nearly done breakfast when some 
chance allusion put us on the subject of game-fowl. 

Thereon Lepidus, turning to my Lord Bishop of 
Pewchester, asked, “ Are you fond of cock-fighting, 
sir? There are some fowl outside who I fancy 
would make a set for us if you liked the sport.” 
But the Bishop’s worst hour in the twenty-four was 
this one sacred to coffee-pots and buttered toast, so 
he answered severely that fighting of any kind for 
pleasure was low and debasing. At this the Roman 
haughtily answered — 

“ Ah, I had forgotten that slaves — and Christians 


62 


LEPIDUS THE CENTURION 


—only fought in the arena.” Then turning to me : 
“ Dear cousin Louis, would your stomach, too, turn 
at seeing a cock put to their proper use the weapons 
with which the gods have lavishly provided him? ” 

I tried to smooth the matter over, and jestingly 
said that our cocks had too many domestic differ- 
ences on hand to care for artificial combats. 

“ And how interesting it is,” observed the irre- 
pressible Lepidus, addressing himself pointedly to 
the Bishop’s wife, “ that the sex which inspires us 
with courage and ambition before marriage should 
be our excuse for a white liver after it.” 

“ The characterisation of white livers describes 
most men so seldom,” put in the vivacious widow 
from across the table, “ that it would be comforting 
to think even matrimony could confer it on them.” 

“ Dear Mrs. Milward, you put the wrong com- 
plexion on my meaning,” answered the Roman, 
helping himself to some more sardines with the 
bread knife. “ I might jestingly observe that one 
may have a white heart and a black liver, or worse 
still, a black heart and a white liver, or none of 
either, or too much of both, but you know what I 
meant, and my respect for your digestion prevents 
me following a complex subject further. I yield 
myself into the hands of our sprightly cousin 
Louis, here, whose shining modesty has alone pre- 


THE CENTURION PLAYS CENTAUR 63 

vented him from speaking all breakfast time. What- 
ever he thinks will amuse you best this morning, will 
delight me above everything.” 

“ What is it, mother,” I said to the gentle matron 
at the other end of the table; “what are we to do 
to-day ? ” 

“ Well,” answered that lady, “ I will not venture 
to plan for you young men — we women folk have 
many things on hand. But before you go anywhere 
I want you to come and see the foal which came last 
night — Osborne says it already shows many good 
points.” So to the stables we presently went, but 
Lepidus contrived even then to force another inci- 
dent into the brief interval between breakfast table 
and manger. 

We had sauntered out into the conservatory in 
ambiguous after-breakfast ease, and the Bishop, be- 
ing a man of peace in practice as well as preaching, 
had tendered my Roman a very choice cigar by way 
of peace offering for the snub he had administered 
an hour before. Lepidus took the strange-looking 
article with grave courtesy, and having surrepti- 
tiously watched the others set theirs to their mouths 
and light up, turned aside to do likewise. Now I 
foresaw that, being absolutely unaccustomed to “ the 
weed,” this first experiment must make him suffer, 
and in the softness of my heart, not bearing to see 


6 4 


LEPIDUS THE CENTURION 


him shamed, I took an opportunity of whispering 
hurriedly to him as we stood among the orchids, 
“ Don’t use it, old fellow, it will make you ill,” and 
accompanied my warning with a meaning look. 

The Roman started, and a fine Imperial flush of 
anger swept over his open countenance. “ Make me 
ill ? ” he repeated in a whisper. 

“ Yes,” I answered, “ make you sick to death at 
the shortest notice— — ” 

“ Now by the splendour of my uncle’s throne,” 
scowled Lepidus, catching my arm with a grip that 
left five blue indents there for many an hour, “ do 
you mean to say that round-stomached hypocrite, 
that gaitered villain in black yonder would try to 
poison me — me, just risen from a common table of 
friendship! Louis, he dies — dies before the world 
is five minutes older ; give me down that brass squirt 
there, and I’ll send him spinning into Hades ! ” 
whereat the angry Roman stretched his hand for the 
greenhouse syringe, the nearest weapon he could 
see. 

“ Hush, hush,” I whispered, “ I did not quite 
mean that. It is a sort of — well, a soother for the 
nerves, a kind of medicine only deadly when you 
are unaccustomed to it.” 

The Centurion frowned, and stared incredulously 
at me. “ A medicine for sound men, and one which 


THE CENTURION PLAYS CENTAUR 65 


kills or nearly kills those to whom the physician 
prescribes it ! Surely, Briton, this is complex ? ” 

“ Ay, and you will find,” I laughed nervously 
thrusting my arm through his and dragging him 
out of harm’s way ; “ you will find the older you 
grow the more complex truth becomes. That is 
right ! chuck the cigar into the water-lily tank, and 
come along with me to the stables; I will be bound 
you know more about horses than tobacco.” 

To the stables we went accordingly. My dear 
mother joyed in horses, regarding them as others 
regard rare pieces of china, for she never rode now, 
though she had once been a fine horsewoman, and 
in her brougham cared little what beasts were 
matched against the pole. But she loved that 
display of glossy haunches which rewarded endless 
grooming with the shine of new-shelled chestnuts 
in October. She liked the neatly braided straw un- 
der those nervous hoofs, and the long array of gold- 
emblazoned names on blue labels above each manger. 
She relished the savour of corn bins as few women 
do, and could tell if there was a musty peck of oats 
in the store-room quicker than any miller ever born. 
As a result, the stable cat on the overturned bucket 
loved her too; the stable boys entertained for her a 
respect which they withheld from all the rest of her 


sex. 


66 


LEPIDUS THE CENTURION 


“ Are they not beautiful beasts ? ” she said 
proudly, turning to the Roman as we strolled down 
the array of friendly quadrupeds. 

“ Beautiful, indeed/’ he answered ; “ but why do 
you keep them all ranked like this — tails outward, 
dear madam? Surely the beauty and intelligence 
of such noble pets shine at the other end — all these 
glossy buttocks are well enough, but in my uncle’s 
stable we know our horses by their heads ” 

“ Have you ever been on a horse, Mr. Lepidus ? ” 
asked cousin Alice, in her sweetest tone. 

The Centurion smiled, and mildly observed that 
he had mounted once or twice. 

“ Then,” quoth his sweet tormentor, who for 
some reason had got the idea into her silly British 
head that no foreigner could ride, above all no 
Italian, “ then do borrow something very quiet from 
dear Mrs. Allanby; the last Roman I saw on horse- 
back made the fortunes of a dull day for us in 
Florence ! ” And Lepidus in reply, with modest 
humility, “ doubted whether there was anything 
staid enough in the stable for him.” 

“ So I might have guessed,” said my cruel little 
cousin, firing a parting shaft ; “ it is as difficult for 
another person to get you foreign gentlemen on to 
a horse as it is for you to stay there once mounted ! ” 


THE CENTURION PLAYS CENTAUR 67 


and picking up her skirt between two dainty fingers, 
the little lady went forward with a toss of her head. 

“ I say, mother,” I took occasion to whisper as we 
two stood back a minute ; “ I wish Alice was not 
quite so rude to Lepidus ; it is most marked.” 

“ Yes, I have marked it, and it makes me anxious.” 

“ Oh, I don’t see why it should make you 
anxious ” 

“ But it does, and just because it means that she 
is very much struck by him, and is trying in that 
way to show herself she is not. My dear boy, I 
know more about girls than you do, and I always 
feel that when one is exceedingly rude to a young 
man without cause or reason, then it is time for her 
guardians to be careful.” 

“ I had never thought of that, mother.” 

“ Louis,” said she, slipping her soft arm into 
mine, and speaking in the playful nursery way we 
had never outgrown, “ there is so much you never 
thought of ! ” and she led me after our guests. 

They meanwhile had gathered in a group at the 
further end of the stable, and were peeping and 
peering into a loose box, whose outlooking was 
hidden by a curtain, while exclamations of surprise 
and admiration rose amongst them. 

“Oh, what a lovely beast! 


“What a back, 


68 


LEPIDUS THE CENTURION 


what loins, what shoulders !” “Just look at his 
neck : it arches like a rainbow — ” “ His coat is like 
satin — see how the veins stand out through it.” 
“ And his lovely little ears ; why, his whole expres- 
sion goes from one extreme to the other as he pricks 
or tucks them back ! ” 

It was, in fact, a famous stallion that our head 
man in a fit of reckless enthusiasm had persuaded 
my mother to take off the hands of a neighbouring 
lord, who joyed in seeing how much wickedness and 
“ blood ” he could breed into a single equine carcass. 
A magnificent fellow few could manage at stall, and 
none mount in the open ; a glorious and useless brute, 
outside his limited sphere of action, that we had 
christened “ Satan ” in awful wonder — and after a 
month’s possession would gladly have parted with 
for a third of his value. There he stood quivering 
with suppressed vitality at the back of his crib ; rank 
with corn and want of exercise; eyeing the faces 
intruding on his privacy with wrathful wonder; 
his broad silky muzzle showing red nostrils as he 
sniffed at us; his fine silky skin drawn tightly over 
the strong muscles beneath, and his fretful fore hoof 
pawing the straw, while he shook his keen head 
in anxiety and displeasure — the embodiment of well- 
fed strength and unmastered pride. 

“ Oh, what a lovely beast ! ” cried Mistress Alice. 


THE CENTURION PLAYS CENTAUR 69 


“ Oh ! I would lose my heart to any man who could 
mount and ride him” adding hastily, as she caught 
the reproving glances of the matrons, “ but then, of 
course, there is no one who could do that.” 

Now Lepidus had been standing a little behind, 
eyeing the great horse silently. Whether he heard 
my cousin’s remarks or not, I do not know, but he 
came to the front, and turning to my mother, said, 
“ A nice animal, Mrs. Allanby, a little heavy, I 
think, in the shoulders, but then there is so much 
draught-horse blood in all your British stables. Do 
you ride him much ? ” 

“ He is never even saddled, Mr. Lepidus ; no one 
dares to get upon him.” 

“ Then I think, with your leave, I will give him 
a breath of fresh air myself ” — and turning to where 
three grooms stood watching us at a respectful dis- 
tance, he called in his fine imperious way, “ Here, 
you slaves of the manger, saddle this beast and bring 
him outside.” 

“ My dear Mr. Lepidus,” expostulated my parent, 
“ it is impossible ” 

“ It is not only possible, dear madam, but may 
perhaps be amusing too,” and he gave a half glance 
to where my cousin stood balancing her emotions. 
Then he led the way outside as though the matter 
were settled beyond dispute, and while we waited 


7 o 


LEPIDUS THE CENTURION 


anxiously, amused himself by rescuing flies with a 
straw from the open water-butt by the coach-house 
door. 

Presently the great horse came. A stamping and 
a scuffling on the hard floor of the stables, then a 
struggle in the doorway, and out burst the black 
stallion with two struggling grooms hanging on 
desperately to his nose and headgear, while a third 
clung to the stirrup leather. He sprung out with a 
snort of joyous defiance, and was with the greatest 
difficulty brought to a standstill near us. But first, 
let me explain that the stable-yard was a roomy ex- 
panse a couple of hundred yards long by half as many 
wide, fenced in with tall walls, those opposite the 
buildings being under the shade of a row of lime 
trees. At the further end were chicken-houses and 
coops; at this, the double gateway opening on to the 
carriage drive. We had come through those gates 
by a side postern, the main portal being fully seven 
feet high, heavy, massive, barred with iron, and 
overtopping the walls on either side by a good 
twelve inches. 

Well, the big horse was brought out, shaking his 
head in wrath at the unaccustomed trappings, and 
pawing the ground as he eyed our group sus- 
piciously. Everybody again admired him — from a 
respectful distance. 


THE CENTURION PLAYS CENTAUR 71 

“ I really wish you would not try to mount, sir,” 
said my kindly mother to the Roman ; “ no one has 
been on his back for weeks — it is really dangerous.” 

“ Then surely, madam, it is high time someone 
got astride of him,” laughed that descendant of 
Imperial Rome, and receiving a whip from one of the 
grooms, he strode forward, gathered the stallion’s 
bridle-reins in his hand, taking up a knot of the 
sable mane as he did so, and having cast a swift 
glance round the limits of the yard, prepared to 
mount. But the big brute did not lend himself 
kindly to the idea. With a shiver of indignation 
and a toss of his tremendous head he swung away, 
hurling a groom head over heels across the cobble 
stones as he did so, being with difficulty brought to a 
stand again — fuming and defiant. 

And on the cheeks of Marcus Lepidus the hot 
Tuscan blood burnt in two bright red spots. He 
followed up the horse, took the bridle and mane 
again, and laying a hand lightly on the saddle crup- 
per as though meaning but to try the tightness of 
the girths, quicker than we could think flung him- 
self sheer astride of the horse. 

Thereat began a fight worth going many a mile 
to see ! With a furious bound that sent the grooms 
flying like chaff on a threshing floor, and a quiver 
from head to tail, the big beast let his temper go. 


72 LEPIDUS THE CENTURION 

Here and there he bounded as he worked himself 
into a fury, sending the gravel spinning, and the 
startled pigeons in a cloud from the stable roofs. 
We thought the rider must come off, and held our 
breath. The horse gathered himself together, then 
swung round as though he were suspended on a 
pivot. But little it mattered to the Roman, who 
went round with him as though horse and rider 
were one piece. Next “ Satan ” stood up straight 
in the air, a sight of wonder and dread, and pawed 
the linden trees, it seemed, our splendid guest watch- 
ing his endeavours from between his ears with a 
contented smile. Up the other way, heels in air 
went that corn-eating devil till the rider lay flat 
back along his quivering haunches. Then “ Satan ” 
shook his mighty head till all its brass and leathern 
furniture rattled like a dice-box, pawing the ground 
and whinnying with shame and rage, but still 
nothing it mattered to Lepidus! At last the great 
horse bolted down the yard, scattering the fowls in 
mad panic from his thundering hoofs. At the stone 
wall he pulled up perforce, and then we saw the 
Roman suddenly take the initiative — swing that 
great black stallion round, wave his armed hand 
above him, and bring down the heavy riding crop 
with a thud across his flank that made one’s own 
skin quiver. 


THE CENTURION PLAYS CENTAUR 73 

Back like a black thunderbolt came the mighty 
beast, straight at the walls by the main gate ; surely 
Lepidus would never try to jump them? Yes, he 
went by us across the yard like a whirlwind, hands 
down, chin up, and then, just as “ Satan,” feeling 
the master-hand upon him, shortened his stride for 
the dangerous effort, just as he was rising to the 
brick and mortar, that addle-brained cousin of mine, 
that fluffy-haired little jade must get in his way, and 
stand there right in the brute’s path, courting death, 
irresolute which side to run, with her cowardly little 
hands outstretched and her eyes dilated with terror. 
It looked for a second as if nothing could save her, 
and then, almost before we had had time fully to 
realise the peril, the Centurion took the situation in 
at a glance, and without a moment’s hesitation, 
without a change of countenance, swung the horse 
round, just as he rose on his haunches, straight at 
the higher seven-foot carriage gates! The stones 
rang under the steel shoes; we saw Lepidus bend 
like a green withy as the mighty body rose beneath 
him, the white splinters flew from the gate-top as the 
triumphant hoofs cut two grooves in it, and with 
an irrepressible yell of delight the stable boys behind 
us screamed “ He is over ! He is over ! ” 

We poured helter skelter through the wicket — 
my dear mother, the Bishop, the grooms, myself — 


74 


LEPIDUS THE CENTURION 


with no regard to seniority or precedence, to pick 
up the Roman’s dead body, and were just in time to 
see him thundering down the avenue, and disap- 
pear over the yew hedge into the lane beyond. Over 
stubble and plow he went like a black dot here and 
there between the distant trees. He galloped round 
behind the fir-covered mound, so full of memories, 
over the ridge and up the pastures, at the same 
break-neck speed, riding with glorious ease, and 
ended up by coming like a tornado through my 
mother’s thickets of cherished rhododendrons, and 
jumping the moat and rose fence straight on to the 
tennis-lawn (Lepidus knew nothing of tennis!), 
where we stood in a breathless and admiring group. 

I shall not readily forget the picture that noble 
Roman made as he reined his smoking stallion back 
upon its haunches — the great steed smothered in 
white foam, his veins pulsing in a moving network 
under his silken skin — and tossing back his own 
disordered curls, turned his flushed and handsome 
face upon us, laughing at his victory. 

“ An excellent horse, madam,” said the Roman, 
dismounting, “ with no faults except those of his 
training.” 

“ And well matched,” observed my parent gra- 
ciously, “ by his rider.” 

We watched the steed, now as humble as anyone 


THE CENTURION PLAYS CENTAUR 75 


could wish, led away to the stables, and then 
turned, chatting towards the house. On the veran- 
dah steps I noticed Alice standing apart, and as the 
Centurion passed near her she held out a small 
white hand, while in the one glance she stole at him 
there was a something no man could misunderstand. 

“ Oh, Mr. Lepidus,” she said gently, “ I am so 
sorry ! ” But the nephew of the Emperor did not 
or would not see, and lightly chatting as he passed, 
left the lady there unrecognised, unforgiven. 


CHAPTER VI 


AN INTERRUPTED EXPLANATION 

I T would need a busier pen than mine to follow 
the days minute by minute, to express the de- 
lightful sense of novelty the stranger brought 
into our hum-drum society ; the vitality — my 
vitality — he radiated out; the infinitely quaint per- 
versions of established fact he expressed, and the 
imperial grace by which he made us feel that his 
very blunders were more commendable than the 
strict proprieties of ordinary folk. He fascinated 
us, and the very fact of his sociability, the way he 
was ever present, all pervading, prevented much of 
those criticisms or cross-questionings which would 
have been so awkward for me to meet alone. 

The good Bishop did indeed observe that morn- 
ing, when Madeira and biscuits in the conservatory 
had softened his heart, and the Centurion was out of 
ear-shot : “ A most singular and interesting man, 
this cousin of yours, Mr. Allanby. Obviously a 
scholar; strangely, I might say almost flippantly, 
familiar with some of the classic authors; so satu- 
rated with his studies that one would think at times 
76 


AN INTERRUPTED EXPLANATION 77 

he had actually known the bearers of the great 
names he uses so lightly! And yet with all this, 
with a personal knowledge of ancient usages, and 
ways of thought which startles even me, who — well, 
ahem ! am sometimes considered to be of fair schol- 
arship, with all this bent-shouldered learning, I say, 
he is a fine fellow, an athlete, a rough-rider of the 
first category, as we saw an hour ago — the very 
ideal of one of those bold Roman adventurers who 
made this country their own, and regarding whom 
history is as silent as our imaginations must always 
be active.” 

I bowed, for it seemed as though his Lordship 
were praising me personally. He helped himself to 
another half glass, and having carefully felt for the 
crispest biscuit in the silver dish at his elbow, added : 
“ And so like you too ! Anyone would know you 
were cousins, if they did not take you for brothers ; 
his very speech is yours; his turns of expression; 
one could almost think he had borrowed part of your 
identity, was thinking with your brain, and living 
with your life ! ” whereat the worthy Churchman re- 
placed his glass carefully on the tray, little guessing 
how near he came to the truth. 

A few outside comments like this I had to stand. 
They were easily evaded. But you will guess how I 
longed to be alone with Lepidus; how I sighed to 


78 LEPIDUS THE CENTURION 

pump him : to get below the surface of his courtly 
ease, to hear what he thought of the present and 
the past — the splendid past that he alone could 
bring up glowing and palpitating to the eager vacan- 
cies of my mind. I grudged him to those pedants 
who after lunch cornered him and tried to get his 
opinion on the place of Michael Angelo in art, or St. 
Xavier in political theology — individuals it made 
them giddy to find he had never heard of. I was 
jealous of those laughing girls who stole the great 
Centurion from the wise men and essayed to teach 
him tennis or croquet — just fancy the nephew of 
an Imperial Caesar at croquet ! Late in the evening, 
when an after-dinner hush had settled on the com- 
pany, I did indeed find myself alone with the Roman 
in the billiard-room, and determined to ask him 
some questions about himself, but the result was 
disappointing. 

I was diffident about beginning, for one thing; 
it seemed such a big subject, and it is awkward 
commencing a conversation on eternity with a man 
whom you suspect of having just arrived thence. 
Lepidus I knew was a frank open-hearted fellow who 
would not hesitate to answer anything I might ask, 
but I felt a prig beside him, weighted with prejudice, 
and full of the scruples of my narrow rearing. So 
I lighted my cigar in silence, and we settled down to 


AN INTERRUPTED EXPLANATION 79 

a game of a hundred up, the Centurion handling the 
cue all the better for having played a game some- 
thing like billiards in that long ago about which I 
itched to ask him. But our hearts were not in it, 
and soon we were both sleepy and bored. 

“ Let's sit down and have a talk,” I said, taking 
another cigar from the box on the side table, while 
Lepidus took a pull at a deep silver tankard of ale, 
a drink he had recently discovered, and already ven- 
erated with an affection which respected neither time 
nor place. 

“ What shall we talk about ? ” he asked, throwing 
himself on the couch next me, and propping his 
handsome old-world head upon his hand. 

What, indeed? I scarcely knew how to begin, 
and stared for a time at the opposite wall through 
my blue curling smoke. 

“ Lepidus,” I said desperately, “ tell me about 
yourself. Think how I burn to know something of 
what you know — speak to me, speak, I beg you.” 

He was silent a minute, then replied : “ What 

shall I tell you, good comrade, to whom I already 
owe so much? Is it about old Rome you wish to 
know, or about these misty hills of yours — how we 
came and conquered, digging the fosse, staking the 
palisades, and kicked our heels on yonder green 
knoll, while we cursed your British climate and 


8o 


LEPIDUS THE CENTURION 


sighed for home ? Why, man, it would take a dozen 
nights to tell but half of it.” 

I waved my hand impatiently. “ All that I can 
fairly imagine for myself. It is not of the gold 
and glitter I want to hear, not of sunshine and blue 
skies. I can picture your red horse-hair plumes 
waving amongst the green fir branches. I can hear 
your laugh, you and your brass-bound comrades, as 
you splashed mud-stained chargers home through 
barbarian bogs after some bloody foray, the captive 
British girls hand-fast to your saddle-bows, and the 
burning villages crimson and black against the sky 
behind you. It is not about all that, Lepidus, not 
how you lived, and drank, and fought, but about the 
after, the crypt — surely, surely there must be some- 
thing of all that long interval stored in your dusty 
mind — something left behind by all those long years 
of waiting ; a single remembrance then were worth a 
library of ancient history, fascinating as even that 
would be from your lips. Come, surely you can re- 
member at least something ? ” 

“ Remember ! ” said the Centurion. “ By Her- 
cules! I should think I did. All that grey sleep, 
as you once called it, is a tangle of remembrances, a 
web whereof the woof has gone amiss and the gaudy 
patterns dropped into disarray. Sometimes I think 
I could patch it out again; a bright dream of the 


AN INTERRUPTED EXPLANATION 81 

manifold nether worlds of death leaps up for a min- 
ute or two, and if I could speak while it lasts, and 
you could jot it down ” 

“ Lovely, lovely ! ” I cried in delight. “ Lepidus, 
this will be worth the doing ; lord ! what a book we 
will write between us — you the one traveller re- 
turned, and I the scribe ! Sit you there as tight as a 
rock while I run and get a note-book from the 
library; we will begin this very evening.” 

Away I went, eager, as you may guess, to set 
down that immortal narrative, possessed myself of 
a fountain pen, and then hurriedly searched the 
writing-table drawers for a blank note-book. The 
first one that came to hand was half full of old 
tailoring accounts, and one cannot well run a narra- 
tive of the outer world on to details of trouser- 
ings, or the price of under-vests. The second my 
mother had three-fourths filled with recipes for pick- 
ling walnuts and preserving rhubarb, while yet an- 
other was a washing account book — and I shut it up 
hastily, since for some reason my dear parent never 
permitted me to look at that. What a shame that 
the Roman’s splendid narrative should grow cold 
upon his lips, while trivialities of this sort hindered 
me! Finally, after many precious minutes wasted 
in fruitless search, I snatched up a sheaf of note- 
paper, whereon was emblazoned in gold, besides our 


82 


LEPIDUS THE CENTURION 


address, the best way of reaching us by train or 
telegraph, and with this bolted back, red-hot, to the 
billiard-room. 

It was empty and deserted. There was still a 
wreath or two of cigar smoke under the lamps, and 
the score board pointed emblematically to the record 
of the unfinished game, but Lepidus had disappeared. 
Deeply chagrined I turned to the doorway, and there 
a footman met me, “ Please, sir,” said the man, 
“ Mr. Lepidus has gone upstairs to play poker with 
the Bishop; the mistress sends her love, and would 
like you to join them at once.” 

A bitter, an irreverent expletive coupled with him 
of Pewchester rose to my lips — he a Churchman to 
rob the world like this of knowledge the Church has 
groped and probed at for unnumbered generations ; 
it was shocking, but what could I do? With a 
groan at the malevolence of fate, I threw the paper 
down, straightened my white cravat instinctively in 
the mirror, and heavy hearted went upstairs. 

They set me down to whist at a side table, and I 
suppose I was about as deplorable a partner as had 
ever revoked or trumped his partner’s cards since 
the world began. As for the Centurion — that false 
repository of splendid secrets — he was in his ele- 
ment. He leant over to me and shouted for the loan 
of a handful of silver in the most shameless way; 


AN INTERRUPTED EXPLANATION 83 


he cut and shuffled, and — with pretty little Mrs. 
Milward behind his chair to prompt — played his pic- 
ture cards with boyish pleasure. Was it possible, I 
thought to myself, as I dealt the odd card into my 
neighbour’s lap, and nervously stirred my coffee 
with the scoring-pencil, that that broad-backed fel- 
low scooping in the pool, and clamouring for his 
penny “ points,” knew more than all of us put to- 
gether of the great knowledge; that he could, if he 
would, say that which should send a shudder of 
awe and wonder through the sentient world, toppling 
philosophies, shaking religions, and altering the 
very foundations of society — and would not ! Never 
was a player so delighted as I, when my partner 
rose and said that as we were hopelessly beaten we 
had better cease play for the evening. 

Later on there came tea, with stronger drinks 
behind for the men, and while we sat grouped round 
the fire, the talk turned somehow to town and coun- 
try fashions in women’s frocks, and the curious pro- 
cess of devolution by which rural linendrapers come 
to possess what Regent Street, or Picadilly, has 
done with two years back. 

“ Ay,” observed my mother, presently, “ but there 
is a girl coming here who will put all our country 
fashions to shame ; ” then turning to me with a 
quick, malicious little glance, “ Louis,” she added, 


84 LEPIDUS THE CENTURION 

“ I have a letter here from Miss Priscilla Smith, to 
say she will be with us on Thursday afternoon. She 
can give us only a short time as my invitation 
clashed with another already accepted, yet that 
is better than nothing, isn’t it, Louis, dear?” and 
the kindly mother, after bending upon me grey eyes 
that stirred the secret of my soul, sent a private 
whisper round the circle. 

“ Better than nothing ” — vexation and chagrin 
dropped from me like a mantle at the mention of 
that name ; why, one day with Miss Smith was better 
than a year’s enjoyment without her. The most 
beautiful girl you ever saw, at least to my mind ; not 
one of those pink-and-white human dolls that are 
sometimes called beautiful by some unacquainted 
with beauty, but a girl with a face like a great book 
that you could go to again and again for tenderness 
or inspiration, and renewed assurance of the dignity 
of your kind. A face that you could go to merry 
and not be quenched; or downcast and find your 
sorrows less than you thought them ; or bad to hate 
your badness ; or good to feel yourself lifted with a 
glorious elation into her sweet comradeship. No, 
Pris (I cannot call her Miss Smith any more) was 
not, perhaps, beautiful at first sight ; I doubt if even 
I, who am somewhat of a fool in general things, 
thought her so until that day, alone with her in the 


AN INTERRUPTED EXPLANATION 85 


garden, when, stormy and discontented, I abused my 
kind and the world for five minutes, then, looking up 
for the first time, found her eyes fixed on me with a 
look of such splendid compassion, such tender under- 
standing and better knowledge, that the spleen died 
away from my tongue, and I was shamed without 
a syllable of reproach. It suddenly flashed on me 
then that she was beautiful, and the belief went on 
increasing, until it became a deathless certainty that 
day a month ago, when in the same rose-walk she let 
the hand I had captured rest in mine, and, giving 
me a glance out of those speaking eyes, revolu- 
tionised the world for me, and (barring some fits of 
boredom I was subject to when she was absent) 
made me one of the happiest men alive. A tall, 
stately girl, with classic features, a gentle upbring- 
ing, everything perfect about her, except her name, 
and that, thank God, it was easy to change. 

All this my mother’s words conjured up while, 
oblivious of the amused eyes bent upon me, I sat, 
as Lepidus said afterwards, “ like Narcissus ab- 
sorbed in his own reflections ” — not so bad a pun, 
considering the Roman’s recent knowledge of our 
vernacular. I saw the good Bishop reflectively 
twiddle his thumbs, and heard him, with modest 
triumph, say to my mother, “ My warm congratula- 
tions, dear Mrs. Allanby, and my wife’s — a charm- 


86 


LEPIDUS THE CENTURION 


ing girl, I have no doubt ; a support and a comfort, 
I trust, to you in the years to come, and a most 
faithful and, ahem! — improving helpmate to your 
excellent son here/’ 

For the rest, I only know I returned a dozen 
friendly hand-grips at bed-time that night with en- 
thusiasm, submitted to a good deal of patting on the 
back and gentle sarcasm, and went to my room 
happy and delighted with everything and everyone 
— even Lepidus. 


CHAPTER VII 


THE ROMAN REFLECTS 

T HERE will occur at times, episodes of dul- 
ness in the best regulated country houses. 
It may be the barometer, or the host ; it may 
be an indiscretion of the cook over last night’s dinner, 
or the approach of the day of departure ; but the solid 
fact remains. Every now and then a fit of silence 
descends on the country house guests, an interlude 
of stagnation when flirtation becomes tedious, gossip 
no longer fascinates, and a gentle melancholy broods 
over minds and tongues that yesterday were the de- 
voted slaves of flippancy or folly. It is a deplor- 
able experience, since the modern host or hostess re- 
gards it as his or her sovereign duty to let no one 
think while under a friendly roof. They may laugh 
and frolic, make love, or play havoc with their di- 
gestions, but reflectiveness is as much an offence 
against countryside morality as shooting a fox, or 
coming down to dinner in a comfortable coat. 

The day after the events narrated in a previous 
chapter, such an episode beset us in Caster Manor. 
In vain my mother led off the ladies in parties to 
87 


88 


LEPIDUS THE CENTURION 


her dairies, her larders or preserve manufactures; 
in vain she dangled before their eyes the newest 
parcels of crewels from Welsh warehouses, or strove 
to interest them in brand-new consignments of 
hymn books, gold-edged, limp-bound, wherewith 
one might be devotional with the utmost con- 
venience 'and gentility. In vain I suggested 
walking, riding, shooting, cigars, billiards, battle- 
dore, petty larceny, arson, abduction — anything, 
everything (except sacrilege) to the good bishop 
and my other male guests; they, like my mother’s, 
were civilly but hopelessly melancholy. There 
is no cure for such a state of things except that 
sovereign remedy Time — a remedy which the gods in 
their mercy have lent us to numb the remembrance 
of griefs, great or little, such as their potency could 
not prevent. Time, like one of those medicines 
our cousins over the sea are fond of inventing, will 
cure everything, from a chilblain to a broken heart; 
it cured our dulness in due course, and by lunch 
that day we were fairly cheerful again. A rebellion 
in the kitchen, promptly suppressed, afterwards 
opened the hearts of the womenkind in a glorious 
exuberance of sympathetic experiences; and two 
bottles of port in the smoking-room convinced my 
own comrades that life, after all, was still worth 
living. 


THE ROMAN REFLECTS 


89 


Then arose the question what were we to do dur- 
ing the afternoon, and as we lounged idly by the 
windows, we fell to making suggestions. One was 
for ferreting the barns, another stood out for a 
cock-fight, until it was explained to him that we 
lacked the rough material, our poultry being bred 
with a view to the table and not the amphitheatre. 
Other ingenious suggestions were that we should 
kill one of my mother’s pigs ; act some play ; go black- 
berrying; or dress us as minstrels and serenade 
the ladies in the drawing-room. There were objec- 
tions to all these plans, but when the boy Binks, 
who had been fetching cigars, and overheard our 
conversation, volunteered the suggestion, on permis- 
sion being given, that we might run the water off the 
lake, which was already very low, and see what fish 
there were in it, everyone’s face brightened. 

“ Why, you chubby imp of wickedness,” said the 
Centurion to the page, “ this is a golden solution of 
our difficulty, and I for one am all for it. We will 
make you a graven image, Binks: the Page and 
the Pike with the black clouds of discontent rolling 
away behind. To the lake, comrades! I am as 
hungry for fish as an otter in a January thaw ! ” 

So it was settled, for whatever pleased Lepidus, 
somehow seemed to please all of us ; and a little later 
on we were taking our way across the lawn, armed 


9 o 


LEPIDUS THE CENTURION 


with baskets and bags for the removal of such spoil 
as Providence might allot to us, and a marvellous 
assortment of articles for baling out the remains of 
our summer-spent pool. It was a foolish and boyish 
enterprise, and I fairly blushed for the exuberance 
of my Imperial Roman, who, with a tin dipper in 
one hand and a clothes-basket under the other arm, 
strode along in front of us gleefully telling the 
sculptor how he, when a little urchin, had once fished 
for prawns in the Tiber, and taken his best catch 
from the interior of a drowned dog, an episode that 
made his fame as a sportsman amongst his comrades, 
but diminished his fondness for prawns at dinner. 
But after all, to be happy one must be boyish. To 
manhood is given the consolation of effort, and the 
sober satisfaction of success, perhaps; but true, un- 
hampered pleasure is the privilege of those alone 
who occupy the state of youth, or can revert to it, 
and Lepidus infused us all that afternoon with his 
juvenescence. At times it is true he would be serious 
for a moment or two in the midst of the wild sport 
which followed, and on one of these occasions, while 
we were fishing, I noticed him standing, as the fal- 
coners say, “ at gaze ” — looking this way, and that, 
up the stream, and then across from side to side 
where it narrowed at the end of our lakelet, until, 
presently, seeing me watching, he came over and, 


THE ROMAN REFLECTS 91 

touching my elbow, said in that low, impressive 
voice he always had when he was interested — 

“ ’Tis strange, cousin Louis, but hereabouts I 
should have said was the place where a fugitive 
maid very dear to me, and I and such of her slaves 
as were left, crossed the stream one night long ago 
when her father’s home was burnt. There was then 
no villa where yours is ; no sluice gates ; no neatly 
margined lake. But down by yon sloping bank on 
the right we came, flying through the dark, tangled 
coppices in our haste, with naught to light us but 
the red glimmer through the trees behind. It was 
here , I would have sworn, we half dragged, half 
carried that tender lady through the winter flood, 
losing as we went a stupid, treasure-laden slave or 
two; and up yonder pine-covered knoll we toiled on 
our way to look for safety — surely, surely I am not 
mistaken ! ” And the Roman glanced about with a 
wistful eagerness in his expressive face, until after 
a time some incident of the sport claimed his atten- 
tion again. 

But, to return to the regular sequence of our nar- 
rative, down to the lake we went in procession with 
all that gear, and round by the margin where my 
mother’s Alderneys were standing ankle-deep in the 
shallows, endeavouring to ward off the swarming 
midges; and so round to the lower end of the narrow 


92 


LEPIDUS THE CENTURION 


sheet of water, where, indeed, nothing but a moss- 
grown hatchway under a foot-bridge separated it 
from the river proper. Here Binks, who was in his 
element, pointed out that by putting down an old net 
he had brought, and lifting the hatch, we could let 
off the water faster than the springs and mill-pool 
a mile above could fill the lake, and with the assist- 
ance, perhaps, of a little baling, all the luckless fish 
in the place would be ours. It was a base poaching 
project, but down we put the net across the face 
of the sluice, and opened the hatch, and with the 
awed delight of schoolboys bent on mischief, 
watched all that the summer had left of our lake go 
tumbling in a turgid flood into the stream beyond. 

In twenty minutes the panic-stricken coots and 
moorhens were flying over the meadows to quieter 
places, while our tame ducks had gone off hurriedly 
to the farmyard to inform their friends the Dorkings 
that the end of the World had surely arrived, and 
from where we stood, almost back to the lawn, was 
nothing but a desolation of black ooze hemming in 
a melancholy succession of diminutive pools. Then 
began a wild scene of boyish riot, a horrible debauch 
of fun, and fish, and mud which I should have been 
ashamed to chronicle but for one little incident at 
the end which has saved it in my memory from utter 
shame. 


THE ROMAN REFLECTS 


93 


The water as it came down, brought with it all 
the fish that had grown and battened under the lily 
leaves for generations, and these with the exception 
of a few which still plunged about in the upper pools, 
were now collected in the last of the series, an ankle- 
deep sheet about half an acre in extent just above the 
sluice gate. This was literally seething with them! 
Enormous pike rolled in the stream like logs of grey 
birch-wood, golden carp tumbled in yellow splendour 
in the sludge; speckled trout, such as none of us ever 
dreamed the lake contained, jumped indignantly 
from the plebian press; lazy tench strove to burrow 
into the soft bottom from which the struggles of 
their comrades in misfortune constantly disinterred 
them; keen perch, barred black and green, set their 
angry spines in defiance of all comers; lithe eels 
passed through the throng like gleams of light, 
and shoals of lesser fish, shivering in silvery bright- 
ness against the darker mass like aspen leaves in 
the breeze, flew here and there. What man, in 
whose veins the food-winning instincts of remote 
ancestors had ever tingled could see such a sight 
unmoved ? 

With a shout the Roman rushed into the water, 
and immediately sank nearly up to his knees in the 
soft black alluvium; we followed him in, as a matter 
of course, and once we had dimmed the immacu- 


94 


LEPIDUS THE CENTURION 


lateness of the white tennis flannels in which, for 
some perverse reason, we had dressed ourselves, we 
became indifferent to all further consequences. We 
soon saw there was no opportunity for baling, as 
this, the last pool, was obviously shrinking of its 
own accord, and narrowing down to the channel 
which led to the floodgates, the fishes perforce fol- 
lowing the falling water, and more and more con- 
gregating in the one spot still remaining to them. So 
we threw away tin pannikins and dippers, and went 
for the big chub and tench with a fine disregard of 
consequences. 

It was a sight to see the Centurion plunging after 
a giant pike with joyous fervour, to watch him edge 
the fish into the shallows, and then rush upon him, 
only to receive perhaps a slap of the broad tail and a 
squirt of liquid mud, as the victim dodged back, 
between his legs, into comparatively deep water. 
Mullens, too, did heroic things, tossing the little 
fish out on to the bank, and having at least one en- 
counter with a gigantic tench, which Lepidus said 
the gods themselves might have watched with in- 
terest from Olympus. Nor was I, or the men from 
Oxford, idle. And as we all floundered and stag- 
gered and reeled, growing every moment more un- 
recognisable through a mask of dirt, perspiration, 
and fish scales, the scene became wild beyond de- 


THE ROMAN REFLECTS 


95 


scription. All that was left of the pool and its oozy- 
bottom became churned by our feet into a perfect 
cauldron of muddy foam and reeking water, and in 
this horrible bath men and fish wallowed and fought 
under the quaintest circumstances. Never had the 
bottom of that placid lake been so disturbed before. 
Now one man would rise victorious from the foam 
clutching a struggling chub, perhaps, to his breast, 
and then another would slip and go down into the 
vortex amidst shouts of unsympathetic laughter, 
which were redoubled as he came up inky black 
from head to heel, dripping and bedraggled, but still 
undaunted ! 

Never had the bottom of that muddy ford been 
so diluted. We had been hard at work for nearly 
an hour; had filled three garden water-barrows with 
specimen fish to be returned to the lake when the 
wild frolic was over; and had thrown an incredible 
quantity of lesser fry over into the lower reaches of 
the river, when that incident happened which is my 
only excuse for putting all this upon paper. 

I have said the water had drawn down until it 
was the stream which it had once been, rather than 
the lake which artificial needs had made of it. It 
was flowing again, in brief, as it had done long 
years ago, and our rough sport had taken place just 
where a natural constriction of the course had sug- 


96 LEPIDUS THE CENTURION 


gested the situation of the ancient ford and the mod- 
ern sluice gate. We had scuffled and stirred the 
sediment of ages, while the water had carried the 
resulting fluid over the weir, until we had actually 
worked right down to the ancient gravel bottom 
itself. Lepidus was still joying in the melee close to 
me, wet to the skin, a fact which he heeded little, 
and scarcely recognisable for weed and mud, which 
he heeded less, when he struck his foot against an 
object imbedded in this shingle, and something 
about the feel of that unseen thing arrested his at- 
tention. He felt it again with his foot, and then 
put down an exploring hand into the still turgid 
water. 

“ It is not a stone,” he said quietly to me, as I 
splashed over to his side, “ and it does not feel like 
wood.” 

“ Perhaps,” I answered derisively, “ it is some of 
the treasure those slaves of yours dropped that night 
you were speaking of ! ” 

“ You laugh, cousin Louis,” said the Roman, “ but 
stranger things have happened, and here it comes at 
all events to answer for itself.” And the strong 
muscles tightened, the broad soldier back stooped 
to the effort, and the next minute, with a swirl and 
a splash, out of the gravelly depth he lifted into 
daylight — a box! 


THE ROMAN REFLECTS 


97 


A leaden casket it was, about a foot square each 
way ; old, dulled by long ages, dinted, covered with 
caddis worm and water slime, yet so perfect that 
the lettering on it, the scrolls, and doves, and pretty 
dancing cupids of the lid could easily be traced. We 
stared at it for a minute or two in blank surprise, 
and then the Centurion, turning those grave black 
eyes of his upon me, said : 

“A right good guess of yours, comrade. It is 
some of the booty from the villa. I remember the 
casket well: remember the very rogue who had it 
on his head, and tripped, and fell here, that evening 
of many memories. Lend a hand, and we will see 
what is in it. ,, 

So I took one handle, he the other, and between 
us we dipped the ancient coffer once or twice in 
the stream, rubbing its venerable scrollery with our 
fingers, till it was all clean again, and then stag- 
gered to the bank with it. There, while the others 
left their fishing and crowded round us, we forced 
the lid and peered into the depth of that strange link 
with the long forgotten. It was full of money, 
nearly to the brim! Quaint, handsome old money, 
bearing the images and superscriptions of dead 
Caesars : gold, silver, and brass, all lying side by side, 
though you could guess by the way the separate 
metals stood somewhat together, and by certain 


9 8 


LEPIDUS THE CENTURION 


mouldering traces of ancient fabrics amongst them, 
that they had once been in bags that were snatched 
in haste from some strong hiding place and thrown 
in here in the panic of a midnight flight, just as we 
found them. 

It was a wonderful sight, and the Roman laughed 
a little scornfully as he recalled, perhaps, the fierce 
labours those things had cost to win. Then — know- 
ing nothing of manorial rights, or the legal niceties 
of treasure trove — he turned to the muddy, wonder- 
ing men about him, and said gaily, “ By the im- 
mortal Jove! our cousin Allanby here keeps the best 
fish in his pond till the last. Shall we share like 
good comrades, sirs? Well then, here’s for you, Mr. 
Sculptor; and here for you, Sir Scholar, and you, 
and you, and enough still remaining in the bottom 
for you, Binks, to buy up all the sweetstuff on the 
village stall, and incapacitate yourself from further 
mischief for many a day,” and suiting his actions to 
his words he plunged his hands into the casket again 
and again with lordly generosity, and poured the 
ancient coins so liberally into the palms of those 
about him, that when he turned to me there were 
none left. 

“ Now this is hard lines, good friend Allanby,” 
said he, shaking the casket as he spoke, “ that we 
should plunder your preserves and leave you nothing 


THE ROMAN REFLECTS 


99 


of the spoil; yet wait a minute — surely something 
rattled then ? ” and peering again into the now 
empty coffer, we saw within it a second lid, and lift- 
ing it cautiously — he and I, the twin inheritors of 
a strange past — there hidden in the false bottom was 
found a golden wreath. 

Such a lovely wreath, made for a lovely woman's 
head ! All of the purest, palest gold that no time or 
age could dim. Fabricated by some cunning past- 
master of his craft in the ages when men worked 
lovingly on such things as these — two dainty myrtle 
sprays in bud and blossom, knit at the lower end by 
a golden bond, and open at top, where the wearer's 
forehead would shine under the soft glimmer of 
those leaves and buds — an ornament of ten thousand 
that would grace even beauty’s self, and I gazed at it 
with strange feelings rising within me, until the 
soldier lifted it and taking me aside, out of earshot 
of the rest, said — 

“ This for you, dear comrade, whom I already like 
so well. You are nearer, maybe, to a wife than I 
am, so take the chaplet and let it be my tribute to 
her, whosoever she be, and in part payment of all I 
owe you. 'Tis a pretty trinket, and no light gift for 
me at least to give, for the last time I saw it, it 
circled the brown head of that lost maid I told you 
of." 


L.ofC. 


100 


LEPIDUS THE CENTURION 


“ Lepidus ! ” I exclaimed, “ are you sure of 
that ? ” 

" Quite, quite sure, Louis ! It is, as I say, a gift 
from the head of my lost girl to your living one. 
Put it in her hair that day she is yours, and if the 
giver is not there to see it so worn — why, spill a 
drop or two in friendly libation to his spirit as the 
wedding cup passes from her lips to yours ! ” 

And I took the chaplet, and all happened as he 
wished. 

That night we had two or three people in from 
neighbouring houses to dinner, my whole attention 
being given to putting my shoulder to the conversa- 
tional wheel, and helping it out of the ruts liable 
to beset it under such circumstances. The tendency 
of a gathering of this kind is always towards ex- 
treme provincialism. The inhabitants of ancient 
Hellas divided into diminutive nationalities by 
mountain barriers, were surprised to hear from 
their conquerors, that organised humanity existed 
beyond their parish boundaries, and in somewhat 
the same way your rural neighbour in England if 
you permit him, will talk of cabbage-bed and 
mothers’ meetings, the latest highway tax or the 
inquisitiveness of the local church-warden’s mother’s 
aunt in a way that condemns your other friends to 
silence from soup to celery. By dint'of dragging 


THE ROMAN REFLECTS 


IOI 


the good bishop in that evening neck and crop to our 
burning question of church government; by stirring 
up the secret wrath which I knew slumbered in the 
breast of the sculptor, Mullens, against the masonry 
decorations of our village school-house, and basely 
inviting Mrs. Milward to teach our Vicar’s wife 
how to organise free kitchens, I blended the im- 
perial and the parochial, the general and the partic- 
ular, in our table talk and earned my mother’s 
gratitude. 

Of Lepidus I saw nothing till we met by chance 
alone in the billiard room about ten o’clock. They 
had been twitting me upstairs with regard to Pris- 
cilla, asking whether it was on her account I had 
sent for the village barber to cut my hair that morn- 
ing ? — and so on. The Roman, of course, had heard 
that banter, and laughed again at me in his friendly 
way, as he sat recumbent on a corner of the billiard 
table, questioning about the lady, her height, her 
colour ; whether “ Smith ” was the patronymic of a 
powerful gens ; and offering to wager me a hundred 
silver coins to nothing that he would convey her 
affection from me to himself within a week of her 
coming. It was only in play, but you know how 
tender lovers are on such scores. Besides, Lepidus 
was undeniably big and handsome; he had a most 
persuasive way with women; a keen eye for female 


102 


LEPIDUS THE CENTURION 


comeliness; and his upbringing had, I feared, not 
been conducted on strictly Anglican principles ; con- 
sequently my brow clouded over at his banter. 

Seeing that, the Roman clapped me on the 
shoulder, saying it was but his fun, and “ no men 
were worth much who were not fools in love.” 
He himself could sympathise with me, for over and 
above some transient flames, some light friendships 
of march and camp, he had himself once dearly 
loved a girl, Prisca Quintilia he said she was 
called. 

“ Such a girl, Britisher/’ he exclaimed, warming 
with his subject and swept away on a sudden by the 
remembrance ; “ the daughter of one of our Roman 
Prefects here by a British mother; a southern fruit 
ripened under the northern skies. Gods ! ” he cried, 
jumping from his seat and pacing up and down the 
room, “ such a girl — tall, fair, stately, her brown- 
red hair like a crown upon her head; the woman 
and the man twin in her spirit; her father’s pride 
and her mother’s gentleness shining in her face; a 
fury from hell when spears gleamed on the rampart ; 
a touch of velvet on a wound when the day was 
done ; a silken step, and a voice like summer streams 
where sick men lay about. 

“ And I loved her, loved her fiercely, Britisher, 
and had her troth here in your holly coppices! 


THE ROMAN REFLECTS 


103 

It was for her I, a fameless soldier, painted my 
name in blood across these endless moss hags; 
it was for her I gutted every hut and village 
from Isurium to the western sea — pouring out 
golden British spoils before her — well content if 
a smile and a touch of those fingers repaid 
a month of danger and hardship. Do you re- 
member, ^ ” cried the Roman, forgetting time, and 
place, in the full flood of his waking recollection, 
“ how the barbarians stormed her father’s strong- 
hold that night in December, and how I saw the 
glare from my hut on the next hill-side, and, half 
naked, sword in teeth, swam the ice-choked river 
to her rescue? Gods, what a fight we made of it! 
and when the place could be held no longer, our 
way back over the snow to the shelter of the forest 
was littered with black corpse of dead foeman, and 
puddled with blood, like the track of the wolves 
who drag their spoil away to caverns on the Ape- 
nines. I sometimes think,” said the Roman, laugh- 
ing low to himself, “ that we of the Tiber shall 
never get the taint of that fierce foster-mother’s milk 
of ours out of our blood,” and he stalked to and fro 
through the tobacco smoke with changing passions 
on his face — the very embodiment in mufti of the 
emotions he spoke of. 

To and fro he went for a time, while I, doing 


io 4 LEPIDUS THE CENTURION 

the wisest thing, never said a word, for I feared 
even by moving to break the thread of the recol- 
lection he had chanced upon. To and fro he went, 
finely agitated, then coming and sitting down sud- 
denly by me, stared into the opposite shadows. 

“ But she died,” he ran on, gripping my wrist, 
and pulling me as it were towards the void he saw 
before him, “ she died, and I died ; and then — years 
after, a hundred years after — two hundred, I know 
not — as I lay in the crypt, her spirit came to 
me from the world of the living. It was a windy 
night and a wet one, and your knoll there was cov- 
ered with pine and with spruce; and between the 
damp shadows, and over the dead leaves that 
scarcely lifted to the draught from her skirt hem, 
she came drifting through the tree-stems to me. 
And I knew she was coming, and smiled in my dust 
and loneliness. 

“ ‘ What ho ! sleeper within there ! ’ she said, be- 
tween the gusts of the storm, beating with clenched 
fist on the sod of the hill-top. 

“ And ‘ Enter * I answered, and down through 
the turf and the solid flag-stone she sank, till she 
rested, a violet cloud, on my bosom. It was pretty 
to feel the dove in her breast fluttering against mine, 
but I would not look — knowing it was easier for 


THE ROMAN REFLECTS 


105 


her so — until she had taken shape, and then I looked, 
and the crypt was full of splendid violet light, while 
at the bier-foot, dangling her dainty heels against 
the stone, and laughingly shaking the night mist 
from her braided hair, was Prisca Quintilia in the 
dress of a Saxon. 

“ ‘ Why, sweetheart,’ I said, getting up on my 
elbow, 4 ’tis a poor night to be out ; art not afraid of 
the wind and the rain ? ’ 

“ Whereat, laughing merrily, she shook her head 
for answer, and I knew I was a fool, for the silver 
drops she had gathered as she came, fell with that 
merry gesture in a shower through her gauzy sub- 
stance and pattered on the floor of my chamber, 
where they vanished. 

“ Then we fell a-talking till the rain had stopped, 
the pine branches overhead began to scrape together 
in the breath of the morning, and the rustle of the 
night worms drawing home from above sounded 
soft on dither hand. And she was as merry as a 
cricket on a hearth, that shadowy lady sitting dan- 
gling her feet on the stone the while she talked of 
her thanes, and thorpes, and burghers, drawing, as 
she chattered, a necklace of amber beads to and fro 
across her pearly teeth. Then all on a sudden she 
stopped and listened as it were — ‘ They call me ! 9 


106 LEPIDUS THE CENTURION 

she cried, and in a thought the lady had shrunk to 
a round of pallid light, and was but a bright spot 
upon the further wall; deeper and deeper she sank 
unto it, until you could see the joints of masonry 
rising through the shine; and then the gravels and 
pine roots stood out as she, making the solid earth 
transparent for a moment, passed beyond — then 
masonry, earth and fir tangles closed up, and she 
was gone. 

“ Again I slept a century or two, keeping little 
note of time, and dozing on the brink of oblivion. 
And many others that you know not of came and 
went across the dusty walls, some in friendship, 
some still frowning over old wounds — for friend- 
ships and wounds outlive empires — until presently 
my love came down again. 

“ This time she had dropt her green Saxon tunic, 
wearing instead a tight-fitting Norman gown of 
purple stuff, her shoes up-pointed, her sleeves puffed 
and slashed with white satin, and round her dainty 
middle a splendid cincture flashing with gems and 
silver — a lovely sight, and she was standing over 
me before I knew of it (so many hundred years were 
making my perceptions dim), tapping on my chest, 
and crying in my ear — 

“ ‘ Up, sleepy one ! By sweet St. Denny, you are 


THE ROMAN REFLECTS 107 

the only man in England who would doze like that 
when Margaret de Lisle stands unattended beside 
his couch ’ — and then, for though her voice was high 
and her eyes sparkled, her look was gentle, she 
stooped and kissed me. Those fair lips roused me 
at once. They smelt unconscionable of sack, while 
on the girl’s cheeks the flush of new excitement was 
burning unmistakably. 

“ * Why, sweetheart,’ I said, ‘ what is it now ? 
It is but a span since you were here before. How 
do the gentle burghers? Is aught the matter with 
your friendly thanes ? ’ 

“ ‘ Phew ! what do I know or care for thanes or 
burghers? I tell you, Sir Mole, I am Margaret de 
Lisle — Norman heiress of Stackley and Brabourne, 
and to-day Queen of Beauty at the great Tourna- 
ment. See here? ’ and taking if off from where it 
hung in the crook of her elbow, she held up for me 
to note a lovely crown of myrtle and orange flower 
cunningly twisted with silver threads. ‘ There ! 
how does it look ? Young De Vipon, whose bloody 
gauntlets laid it a few hours since upon my fore- 
head, said he had never seen myrtle so well- 
becomed ! ’ and the girl with swift woman fingers 
placed the crown amid her gleaming hair, and turned 
upon me a face that shone with happy excitement. 


io8 LEPIDUS THE CENTURION 


“ * De Vipon, lady, would seem to Te a capable 
judge, as well as a bold soldier.’ 

“‘And you are not jealous of him? He loves 
my body up yonder.’ 

“ ‘ Let him have it, sweet lady. It no more con- 
cerns me than who owns the green kirtle you came 
here in last time. You smell of supper ” 

“ * And good reason. They have feted, petted 
and pampered me since De Vipon gave the crown, 
till my head fairly spins. They put me ’tween him 
and the king himself, newly come from wars abroad, 
at the joy-feast, and what with lights, music, flattery, 
and sack, I was near distraught when my serving- 
women bore me off to bed an hour ago.’ 

“ ‘ It might well be so,’ I said, and there the lady 
stood and talked, sometimes a mere violet shadow, 
as her restless body tossed, half awake, under silken 
counterpanes somewhere above, and sometimes, as it 
slept, clear and defined as that body itself.” 

Here Lepidus himself seemed dozing, and I half 
feared this strange confidence into which he had 
dropped, so unreal and yet so picturesque and vivid, 
was at an end. But I kept still, my hand on his, and 
everything was as quiet as could be, save the ticking 
of my watch, and the sound of an under-footman 


THE ROMAN REFLECTS 109 

whistling as he cleaned the dinner glasses in his 
pantry across the yard — 

“ For she was one of the early birds, 

And I was an early worm.” 

Then the Roman suddenly roused again, and went 
on : 


“ I slept and slept — every rustle of brown leaves 
overhead marking a passing winter, until presently 
across my sleep there fell the sound of someone sob- 
bing. It was away back in the darkness, perhaps a 
mile back down the thicket path, but it roused me. 
Nearer it came, while I kept my eyes tight shut, till 
at last the light shone through my dusty lids, and the 
smothered sighs of a woman in grief were but a pace 
or two from my feet. Then I roused, and there again 
was she, whose soul, affiliated to mine, came to me 
thus, time after time, while her bodies tossed to and 
fro on the thing you call life. That night she was all 
in rags, her russet brown skirt frayed at the hem and 
full of burrs; her poor feet bare and muddy; her 
hair tangled and wind-blown; her face as white as 
the stars overhead; and her arms, as far as I could 
see them, scratched and bleeding. But in the clutch 
of those arms, shrouded by a faded red shawl 
twisted across her shoulders, was something bulky 


no 


LEPIDUS THE CENTURION 


and valuable! She stood there, leaning against 
the grey stones for a time, rocking softly from one 
foot to the other, and cherishing that bundle, with- 
out noticing me, while her tears ran down the rag- 
ged shawl. Then suddenly she came across, as 
softly as the mist over wet meadow grass, and 
standing by my side, said without preface, ‘ They 
turned me out, Lepidus! I knew they would/ and 
the tears gushed out anew. 

“ ‘ Who turned you out, sweetheart ? ’ 

“ ‘ My father, and brothers, and harsh Janet, my 
sister. They turned me out a week ago — me like 
that ! And if it hadn’t been for the food my mother 
hid next day in my path, I had starved outright by 
this.’ 

“ ‘ Why/ I said, ‘ this is a different tune to the one 
you piped last time; but things cannot surely be so 
bad. What have you in the bundle? More tro- 
phies, more gems and jewels? ’ 

“ ‘ Gems/ cried the little lady indignantly flash- 
ing up behind her tears with fierce mother-pride. 
‘ Infinitely better than gems;’ and dropping her voice 
she whispered proudly, ‘ Look ! isn’t he lovely ? 
Didst ever see such cheeks or such a rosebud mouth 
before ? ’ and turning back the flap of her weather- 
stained shawl, she showed me a sleeping babe but a 
day or two old. 


THE ROMAN REFLECTS 


hi 


“ I spoke her softly after that, but of De Vipon and 
the tournament she remembered nothing, shaking 
her head, and saying she was just plain Alice Selby, 
whose father was woodcutter in King Harry’s for- 
ests here — ‘ if I did not believe it, I might go and 
ask — everyone for miles round knew rough old John 
Selby, and his pretty daughter Alice,’ and the poor 
girl blushed and sighed as she uttered her own name. 

“ Later on there came another puppet in the soul- 
show, a merry, brown-eyed merchant’s wife, who 
talked of tallow and hides; and then another — only 
a spell or two ago, it seems — who hurried in, her hair 
piled high, and powdered white upon her head ; her 
shoes steep-heeled and coral red. She swept in 
hastily and anxious-looking, her flowered silk skirt 
clutched in her jewelled hand, and touching me with 
an ivory fan — 

“ ‘ Lepidus,’ she said, ‘ dear Lepidus, they have 
kept you waiting here too long. But ’tis near over ; 
to-morrow — or some soon to-morrow — the respite 
comes; I was sent to tell you — good-bye, good-bye ” 
and in a thought she too was gone.” 

“ Who came next ? ” I asked. But this time my 
Roman had stopped in earnest, and when presently he 
roused and shook himself together, it was but to de- 
clare he had never in his life felt so sleepy before; so 


1 12 


LEPIDUS THE CENTURION 


seeing there was no more to be got from him that 
time, I led the way to bed, and tossed about all night 
haunted by the strangest fancies. 


CHAPTER VIII 


SHE COMES 

W E went rat hunting next day. 

Lepidus was up before breakfast, and 
took a swim in the lake, much to the 
alarm of the Bishop's lady, who saw him drying 
himself far away amongst the fir trees — the Centu- 
rion was no more ashamed of his body than he was 
of his soul — and indignantly reported the circum- 
stance to my mother. After breakfast, Mrs. Mil- 
ward and my cousin carried the Roman off to our 
tennis-courts, where, though his play robbed the 
game of much science, it added immensely to its ex- 
citement. There was a splendid vigour dn his rushes, 
such as would have carried dismay into the defend- 
ers of a fort threatened with escalade, while his 
“ services," though not always exact, came from 
those sinewy arms with almost the swiftness of 
Jove's own thunder-bolts. 

Then, as I said, when tennis was over, the ladies 
went off to read indifferent novels, or devise methods 
of spending their kinsmen's earnings, and Lepidus, 
”3 


1 14 LEPIDUS THE CENTURION 


prompted by that boy Binks, invited me to come and 
see one of my own corn-stacks thrashed. 

“ You must come,” he said, beaming with the en- 
thusiasm that marked everything he did. “We are 
going to take sticks, and all the terriers, and Binks 
says he will get us the biggest jar of ale in the cellar 
— the butler being asleep — though privately I believe 
Binks had drugged him with this very object. Mary 
too has promised to pass us out a basket of bread and 
cheese through the pantry window — so you must 
come.” 

“ But my dear fellow, why this secrecy ? Surely 
I have influence enough with Mary or the butler to 
get you lunch without such illicitness ? ” 

“ Ay, good friend Louis, but to Binks and me the 
food would lose half its savour if it were come by 
honestly; so on with your oldest jacket, and we will 
wait just five minutes for you by the stable gate.” 

Now I hate rats and love rat hunting. Theoret- 
ically I reverence life in every possible shape, not 
knowing where it came from or whither it goes, 
and can quite sympathise with those Eastern devo- 
tees, who refuse to sit down abruptly on the bare 
ground for fear they may thereby inconvenience a 
centipede or earwig. But you will find everyone’s 
philosophy has a weak point, and that of mine in this 
connection is rats. Fierce and valorous I know they 


SHE COMES 


115 

are; conceited over their young as any human 
mother, arrogantly holding, like her that the true 
pivot of the world is their own particular nursery; 
tender to the infirm of their own species until tender- 
ness becomes weakness; bold in design, abundant in 
resource, resolute and skilful in execution; ventur- 
ing their lives in fulfilment of that destiny to which, 
through no choice of their own, Nature has ap- 
pointed them, and dying when the time comes with 
their backs to the wall — all this makes my dislike 
shabby without amending it. 

So that morning I put on my oldest coat, took 
down a blackthorn kept for the special purpose from 
the rack, and set off to the meeting-place with the ut- 
most cheerfulness. 

And a jolly time we had of it. The stack-yard, 
like a giant's camp, with a new harvest's stacks in 
place of tents, was tremulous with the busy roar of 
thrashing machines when we arrived. To left was a 
broad pond, framed in by mighty oaks which had 
seen as many generations of harvesters come and go 
as we have seen harvests. To right was a fine old 
farmstead, a village in itself of dormer windows, 
steep roofs, mighty piles of chimneys and sunny 
walls whereon snap-dragon and wallflower flour- 
ished, as ruddy and bright-toned with time and 
weather as the ripest of those pleasant-scented pip- 


n6 LEPIDUS THE CENTURION 


pins lying mellowing in its great apple lofts. On 
the pond ducks were swimming round the legs of 
(horses leisurely taking their mid-day drink; on the 
lichened farm-house roof white fantails were slip- 
ping and sliding, while in the yard itself all was ac- 
tivity, dust, and noise as the heavy corn shocks tum- 
bled in a steady stream down the hungry thrasher 
slopes, coming out at the other end a tumble of bent, 
earless straw by one exit, and a flow of clean round 
grain by another. 

Binks was general in command. As the special 
stack being operated upon began to get low, he placed 
the representative of Imperial Rome at one corner, 
myself at another, and scrambled up on top himself. 
Our three terriers, their limbs fairly quaking with 
excitement, and deep sunk in the litter of spent 
straw lying round the stack, took places between us, 
and then we were ready. Whirr, whirr, whirr, went 
the big wheels of the machine, while a hundred flails 
within it, separating corn from husks, kept up a deaf- 
ening roar. The three or four men feeding the shoot 
were invisible at times as they staggered about under 
their burdens of corn, but slowly they sank lower and 
lower, until the rats found their stronghold no longer 
tenable, and began to move. “ Fritz ” the terrier 
got the first one. It leapt out almost into his ready 
mouth : a snap and a shake of his head, and he had 


SHE COMES n 7 

secured “ first honours.” Then another bolted to- 
wards the Centurion and was settled by a blow from 
the blackthorn which would have unloosened the soul 
from a bigger body than that of the poor “ vermin.” 
At the same instant Binks on top was hotly en- 
gaged; his rat, after dodging about the shocks for a 
time, came over the six-foot side with Binks in com- 
pany right on top of the terriers, who, mad with ex- 
citement, were waiting eagerly below. While I was 
watching the extraordinary scramble that followed, 
a shout from the harvesters made me look round 
just in time to see a giant amongst rodents slip si- 
lently by me into the strong cover beyond. Then 
Binks, fighting on his knees like Witherington at 
Chevy Chase, was aiming blows at quarry on either 
side of him, while Lepidus, In company with the 
spare dogs, was wildly chasing something round the 
stack, I myself being engaged, it must have seemed 
to an onlooker, on some private thrashing operations 
on a particularly bulky heap of corn into which I 
could have sworn a rat went, though I neither saw 
him leave it, nor could find him in it, alive or dead, 
afterwards. 

The lower the stack sank the more furious the fun 
became. I will not say the sport was greatly to the 
credit of our good bailiff, for on an ideal farm there 
are few rats, and in an ideal wheat stack there are 


1 1 8 LEPIDUS THE CENTURION 


none at all. But the harvest had been hurried, the 
com was piled on a foundation of faggots instead of 
being, as it ought to have been, raised on those stone 
mushrooms every countryman knows so well — and 
we were not for the moment agricultural economists. 
When there was but a foot or two of straw the rats 
fairly streamed out, and not a moment’s respite was 
allowed to dogs or men. The slaying-stir, as our 
picturesque-tongued northern ancestors called it, 
spread to the labourers, work was thrown aside, the 
ganger put away thoughts of evening’s wage bills, 
the neglected thrasher thundered along on an empty 
stomach, the last few trusses were thrown aside, the 
faggot foundations torn up, and for a few minutes 
the ruins were a wild pandemonium, an inextricable 
medley of straw, men, dogs, rats, steel-pronged 
forks, and blackthorns ; a confused babel of machin- 
ery, shouting, squeaking and barks ! Then we rose 
from the dust and the riot, perspiring and dirty, and 
under the noses of the sniffing terriers, laid out in 
two lines three dozen “ tails ” as a result of the fight. 

It was sanguinary, it was perhaps ignoble, but 
cruel it was not, for there was no room for wound- 
ing ; the luckless little beasts died in the open and for 
each of them the game was not lost till it was over. 
What better terms does Providence ever give to the 
best of us ? 


SHE COMES 


119 

While they unthatched the next stack and worked 
it down we had our meal in the neighbouring barn. 
Binks had been as good as his word, or better, and 
had provided an ideal stack-yard lunch. We had 
the farmer and his foreman in, and it would have 
done your heart good to see how the nephew of the 
Emperor and they fell upon the beer and cheese, 
each seated upon an ample truss of hay, while they 
made the dusty drapery of cobwebs shake on the 
rafters overhead with their stories and laughter. 
For my part, I ate in silence and stared. Was it pos- 
sible, I asked myself, that that jolly gaitered, rat- 
hunting country squire opposite, nursing the great 
stone ale jug on his knee, and shouting with laughter 
at the countryman’s musty stories, was the man who 
last night had called up before me terrible and beau- 
tiful visions from the nether world, who for me, his 
newer self, had lifted for a moment the curtain we 
all long to lift, and had shown me, I dare not say 
the truth, but something that he at least took to be 
that thing? 

Well ! I was getting accustomed to surprises, and 
Lepidus at least seemed to have absolutely forgot- 
ten the talk of the night before. The lunch ended 
presently, whereupon we plunged into a new bout 
of slaughter. 

All this time you may be sure I had not lost sight 


120 


LEPIDUS THE CENTURION 


of the fact that Priscilla — my Priscilla — was to 
come to us to-day. With the jealousy of a lover I 
had scrupulously refrained from mentioning the fact, 
but it was not forgotten, and after lunch, in the midst 
of rat hunting, when Lepidus had no thought but the 
sport he was pursuing with such boyish ardour, I 
took many a surreptitious look at my watch, calcu- 
lating with secret joy and those tremulous misgiv- 
ings peculiar to the lover's malady, the time when I 
should see my lady again. 

My mother had elected to meet her at the station 
in the carriage, and my idea was to slip back to the 
house (leaving the Roman of course, to his un- 
worthy sport) — have a comfortable wash and brush 
up, and thus, after getting into that new suit of 
clothes, as to the peculiar suitability of which to my 
person I do not mind confessing much recent thought 
had been given — thus washed and rehabilitated I 
should be able to receive her in our porch, as she 
ought to be received, with graceful dignity. I felt 
that would be giving myself a fair chance, and when 
Lepidus, of whom I already cheiished a deep instinct- 
ive jealousy, arrived at tea time, dirty, dishevelled, 
and probably smelling of rats and farm-yards — why, 
I hoped, and thought, the comparison would not be 
all in his favour. So I kept an eye on my watch, and 
when there was just enough time left to carry out 


SHE COMES 


121 


the little scheme comfortably, I went over to the 
Roman, telling him that the severe demands of duty 
called me home to receive my mother’s guest; there 
was no reason whatever for him to cease his sport. 
“ The sacred cause of agriculture absolutely de- 
manded his presence at the ricks for the present,” 
later on we would meet at home, but at the moment, 
much as I deplored it, I was bound to get back 
quickly. 

The Roman laughed; perhaps I had rather over- 
done the apology and he saw through my simple arti- 
fice. Be that as it might, he contented himself with 
good-humouredly excusing me, sending his love 
to Miss Smith, and advising me to hurry, as he had 
heard the train whistling a little while before in the 
next valley. 

Just as I was starting, Binks came up to ask if I 
would mind carrying up half-a-dozen rats for the 
ferrets at home, as no one was going that way for 
some time? The task was not a particularly wel- 
come one, yet I was in such a profoundly dirty state 
already, and smelt so aggressively of vermin that a 
little more of either characteristic would not mat- 
ter. The rats were consequently handed over, and I 
started off at my best pace for the Manor House, 
whose red chimney-stacks could be seen over the 
tree tops. 


122 


LEPIDUS THE CENTURION 


What Lepidus had said about the whistle in the 
next valley had been taken at the moment merely as 
a jest, but by the time I got into the lower part of our 
mile-long drive his suggestion made me uneasy. 
There had undoubtedly been something like a whistle 
down there — could I have made any mistake? The 
watch was pulled out again, consulted nervously, 
and — think of my horror — it had stopped ! It 
pointed to exactly the same time as when I was still 
ratting in the yard half an hour ago. And at that 
very instant, still standing dumbfounded, I heard 
the sound of approaching wheels coming round the 
curve. There was no mistaking that sound, it was 
my mother's Victoria and highstepping chestnuts 
without a doubt; and with a groan of chagrin at 
being caught in such guise I hurriedly stuffed the 
wretched rats into my coat-pockets and glanced 
round for a hiding-place. 

Just there the drive was bordered by a tall thorn 
hedge, beyond which was a spruce copse. If the 
latter could only be reached unseen the bath and 
Clean suit might still come off. I ran down the 
drive like a poacher flying from six months’ hard 
labour, and plunged desperately for something that 
looked like a gap on the right. But our hedger car- 
penter was a good man, and conscientious; a perfect 
barricade of thorns met me. Reeling back, scratched 


SHE COMES 


12 3 

and foiled, I caught a sight between the trees of two 
ladies in the swiftly approaching carriage, and, what 
was worse, as I subsequently heard, they caught a 
sight of me behaving like a March hare out for a hol- 
iday! Ten yards higher up there was another gap. 
I leapt the muddy ditch and jammed myself head 
first into it. A swishy bramble snatched my cloth 
cap off and waved it derisively aloft, a hawthorn 
spike, a good two inches long, penetrated the tender- 
est part of my leg, while another bared my knee with 
a six-inch rent, and just as the friendly shelter be- 
yond was almost gained the cruel bit of timber I was 
clutching gave way, and I rolled helplessly into the 
muddy bottom of the drain. 

My mother has an absolute confidence in my so- 
briety. She often boasts to' other mothers not so 
fortunately situated, that she has been able to trust 
me with the keys of the cellar since I was ten years 
old; but even her kindly face clouded over for a 
moment as the carriage drew up five yards away, and 
I crawled on hands and knees out of the docks and 
stinging-nettles. 

“ My dear Louis ! ” she exclaimed, “what are you 
doing? ” 

“ Oh, it is just nothing, mother ; I was only walk- 
ing back from the farm, and — ah, slipped into the 
ditch as you came up. Miss Smith,” I said, turn- 


124 


LEPIDUS THE CENTURION 


in g to the beautiful giri by her, in whose face sur- 
prised amusement was struggling with gravity, 
“ you must forgive the guise in which I come before 
you — I was hurrying home to meet you.” 

“ Thank you, Mr. Allanby ; I am sure your haste 
was most eloquent of your good intentions,” and 
she smilingly held out a hand to me. 

“ But what,” quoth my parent, who embodies all 
the virtues except tact, “ what have you been doing 
to make yourself so dirty — and what are those 
strings hanging out of your pockets? ” 

Alas! in my haste I had forgotten to tuck away 
the tails of those odious little beasts we had been kill- 
ing, and my mother ran on — “ Good gracious me ! 
they are rats' tails ; oh, how horrible ! They are not 
alive, are they? ” 

“ No, mother,” I answered, humbly pulling out a 
couple of gory victims to reassure her, “ we have 
been ratting down in the stack-yard, and I was tak- 
ing these home to the ferrets.” 

“ My dear boy ! — but why carry them in your 
pockets like that, with your handkerchief and tobacco 
pouch? Well, never mind? I don’t think we will 
offer you a lift in the carriage just at present ” — this 
with a meaning sniff in my direction — “but come 
straight home like a good fellow,” and then she 
called back as the carriage swept on up the drive — 


SHE COMES 


125 


“ and for heaven’s sake, dear Louis, have a wash 
before you come into the drawing-room to tea ! ” 

Those ferrets of ours went supperless to bed that 
night. 

Lepidus was late home. He had gone down in 
the twilight to see some cocks that were to fight a 
private main in the back parlour of the village 
inn next day, and came back just in time to dress 
for dinner. Then happened that which I record 
briefly and prosaically, but which was surely as 
strange an incident as ever came to be recorded in 
black and white. It altered the whole current of 
our lives for the time, and led directly to that tragic 
comedy, that strange and dreadful episode, every in- 
cident of which still tingles in my blood, casting a 
shadow of sweet and bitter remembrances over my 
waking hours, and filling my dreams with fancies 
splendid but sorrowful. 

We had both put on the garb of social servitude, 
and met, clean collared, black coated, and ample in 
shirt fronts in the lobby on our way to join the other 
guests. My heart was softened towards the stranger 
within our gates, for Priscilla had been very gra- 
cious to me at tea-time. Was I not the successful 
lover, with that incomparable lady under my roof, 
while he, poor fellow, was separated from his mis- 
tress by who knew how many hundred years, or how 


126 LEPIDUS THE CENTURION 


many circles of immeasurable space? I was tender, 
I say, to the Roman, and linking my arm in his led 
him light-heartedly down the passage, chatting as 
we went The arras hung across the doorway at the 
end, and lightly lifting it, there across the great 
black-oak hall was my dear girl standing by the fire- 
place, half turned towards us, and talking to the 
Bishop of Pewchester. 

You could not have seen a prettier picture for 
twenty miles around. She, that tall, sweet lady, had 
put on a dress of shimmering white satin, that fell 
soft as milk and tender as moonlight from her grace- 
ful shoulders to her feet. Behind were the ebony 
shadows of the panelling, against which that fair 
lady stood out like a splendid star on the black fore- 
head of the night. The distant lights twinkled 
through the banked palms and flowers, the pine-logs 
cracked and sparkled throwing a lovely changing 
glow over her white robed figure, the air was full of 
pleasant scents and harmony, and in an ecstasy of 
delight I touched the Roman on the arm. 

“ Look, look! ” I whispered, “ there she is. Surely, 
dear Lepidus, nothing new or old was ever better 
than this sweet, modern girl of mine ? ” 

Then Lepidus looked — and as he looked again the 
red southern blood rushed to his forehead, and 
then fled back to his heart. Again the fierce red 


SHE COMES 


127 


current swept round his brawny neck and filled the 
swelling veins of his temples, while his eyes flashed 
and his breath came quick and short. 

“ That your girl,” he said in a minute, when the 
first gust of his surprise was over, “ that your girl, 
your modern girl ? Louis — you lie — that is my girl 
— Prisca Quintilia ! ” 

For a minute we stood silently by the doorway. 
Knowing all I knew I durst not answer him; remem- 
bering all he had told me I durst not argue it; and 
then the Roman, recovering first, signed to me to go 
forward. Stunned and bewildered I obeyed me- 
chanically. We went over to the fire, and there, 
again mechanically — scarcely knowing what I did, 
but prompted by a look, I approached the lady, and 
said — the very words sounding absurd and unreal in 
my ears: 

“ May I have the pleasure of introducing my 
friend, Mr. Marcus Lepidus?” after which, turning 
to the Incomprehensible One by my side, “ Lepidus,” 
I faltered, “ let me introduce Miss Prisca Quintilia; 
no, no! — Miss Priscilla Smith, I should say.” 

And she smiled, and he smiled, and we all smiled 
and bowed! 


CHAPTER IX 


THE OLD LOVE AND THE NEW 

A LITTLE time ago I might have taken Lep- 
idus’s exclamation with startled disdain. 
Priscilla his ! — my Priscilla, who had grown 
up as it were under my mother’s eye, the beloved of 
that Roman swaggerer I had brought in a thankless 
moment from the tomb ! It would have been a mani- 
fest absurdity, looked at in its mildest light. But 
now everything was changed; a few hours had 
taught me the shallowness of my understanding. I 
was numbed by wonders, dazed by the self-assertion 
of that other one, and miserably weak with a strange 
weakness that was neither distinctly in my soul nor 
in my body, but pervaded me hour by hour with 
growing intensity. 

Thus, when I had blundered through my intro- 
duction, and the Roman, looking abominably hand- 
some, had turned the full splendour of his presence 
on Pris, I drew back, and inwardly consumed with 
jealousy, but doubtful how to act, took refuge behind 
the person and tongue of the perennially cheerful 
128 


THE OLD LOVE AND THE NEW 129 


Mrs. Milward. But over that comely widow’s sleek 
and powdered shoulders you may guess how, ever 
and anon, I stared at the group standing by the fire- 
place. And as I stared, one grain of comfort came 
to me. There had not been, nor was there, a visible 
sign of recognition in Priscilla’s face, and the Ro- 
man, open as he was with me, was apparently keep- 
ing from her, as he withheld from all others, the 
wonderful secret we two alone knew of. Had it been 
otherwise, had he spoken, had there been any re- 
membrance of him from the long ago, she must have 
turned colour, or screamed, or opened her arms, as 
dead Abelard opened his when dead Heloise was 
lowered into his tomb. But not a flush went over 
that gentle face, not a sign of more than womanly 
approval of a tall, well-featured stranger came into 
those bright eyes, that looked so frankly into every- 
one’s face. No, Pris at least knew nothing, and this 
was something gained; as for the Roman — I some- 
times thought he did actually forget, either from 
policy or from some peculiarity of his condition, 
when with strangers all that he remembered with me, 
he was absolutely himself again as I looked: bold, 
bright, unembarrassed, just the sort of man to win 
his way straight into a female heart, but nothing 
about him in the least suggestive of what he was, or 
had been — and then the gong rang for dinner. 


130 


LEPIDUS THE CENTURION 


I trust I did my duty fairly at the meal, although 
I splashed more gravy about than usual, and an- 
swered most inconsequently when the Bishop’s wife 
spoke to me. For they were so abominably hand- 
some that pair ! I tortured myself, and fanned my 
rising jealousy by bitterly saying to myself that at 
last my diamond had found a setting worthy of her; 
here at last was someone matched to her in every- 
thing, I said, savagely confiding my sorrows to the 
soup. Perhaps the same idea came to the rest of the 
table, for the conversation flagged at our end, and 
presently all eyes were turned to where those two 
sat, facing each other across the cloth, and engrossed 
in some blithe discussion; yes, they were undoubt- 
edly a handsome pair, and as my betrothed bent for- 
ward under the shaded candle-light to listen to the 
Roman beyond the maidenhair and roses, I could 
see the colour come and go upon her cheek and her 
White bosom heave 

— “ With her laughter or her sighs,” 

and I asked myself whether her eyes would have 
sparkled like that had I been talking to her, whether 
she would have followed my words with the rapt 
attention of a disciple sitting at the feet of a saint; 
and the answer to both questions was distinctly 
melancholy. I hated everyone for noticing them 


THE OLD LOVE AND THE NEW 13 1 


so pointedly, and leaving me in gloomy silence, and 
when Mrs. Milward who loved scandal, looked first 
at me, then at them, then back at me again, with 
an almost imperceptible lift of her eyebrows, I hated 
her. It was only a well-bred lift of a hair’s-breadth, 
but for the moment I hated her for that hair’s- 
breadth, as much as a man may hate a woman. 

At the Manor we do not very strictly observe the 
separation of sexes after dinner. It is an old custom, 
but I do not know that there is much else to be 
said for it. In the most remote periods it was no 
doubt a matter of expediency, as the post-banquet 
hours were liable to brawls, in view of which a care- 
ful host naturally sent into' inaccessible places his 
most easily damaged goods. In the time of our 
grandfathers, again, it was a matter of decency, as 
that interval was sacred to drunkenness and obscen- 
ity. But since at the Manor my mother foresaw 
neither of these contingencies as the finish to a satis- 
factory meal, the ladies remained with us, or rather, 
we rose simultaneously, distributing ourselves 
through the hall, billiard-room, conservatory, or 
drawing-room, as we fancied. 

That evening I was button-holed by a worthy rec- 
tor from a neighbouring village, who wanted me to 
use my influence to get the Bishop to do something 
or other for him, and it was nearly an hour before 


132 LEPIDUS THE CENTURION 

I tore myself free. Then my first thought was of 
Pris. Where was she? Surely, on this, her first 
evening here, she ought to pay me a little more at- 
tention ? But the lady was nowhere to be seen, and 
what made her absence worse was that the Cen- 
turion was missing too. They were not in the bil- 
liard-room, where a couple of men were playing 
amongst the wreathing tobacco smoke, and they 
were not in the hall. As I passed into the drawing- 
room, the grass- widow looked up from a group she 
was amusing with stories of Indian cantonments, 
and reading my face, said wickedly — 

“ They are in the conservatory, dear Mr. Allanby; 
do go and fetch them; they have been there such a 
long time.” 

So thither I went, across the soft Turkey carpets 
and between the archipelagoes of furniture where- 
with the modern housewife dots her rooms, my mind 
divided between a schoolboy jealousy, and a curious 
wonder as to what the nephew of Vespasianus might 
be saying to the girl whose other self he had told 
me he had loved and wooed in Imperial Rome. Was 
he recalling to her, with a touch or a look, some des- 
perate love scene by the distant Tiber? Was he 
bringing to her pliant mind, as his mesmeric pres- 
ence had brought to mine, some vivid picture of the 
past? Then all of a sudden there impinged upon 


THE OLD LOVE AND THE NEW 133 

my inner sense the unmistakable odour of roasted 
chestnuts! The carpet under my feet turned into 
tesselated pavement, and in front rose upon my 
vision a red and white striped awning with under 
it a little brown-skinned urchin sitting roasting those 
nuts at just such a brazier as we see nowadays at the 
street corner, while a fdlow in brass and scarlet, 
with his back turned to me, was sorting them on the 
hot iron with his square scabbard-tip before he 
purchased. 

The vision, or whatever it was, went as swiftly as 
it came, but the odour of burning husks was still 
pungent in my nose as I peeped through the open 
doors of the conservatory. Yes, there they were in 
a dim nook amongst the camellias, and for a moment 
all the blood ran back cold to my heart, for the Ro- 
man was on one knee before the girl, and either hold- 
ing her hand or giving her something! It was a 
pretty scene enough to a disinterested spectator, no 
doubt, but I did not take it so, and just as a rush 
of anger was coming back with the blood to my 
head, Priscilla laughed lightly, and said — 

“ There, let me pin it for you ; those collar studs 
are always treacherous things, and how you men, 
who boast yourselves above all fashions, can consent 
to wear such uncomfortable neck-gear I cannot think. 
“ Down lower, please, Mr. Lepidus — lower still, and 


134 


LEPIDUS TPIE CENTURION 


give me the pin,” and down went Imperial Rome 
upon one knee, while the girl bent over him, and for 
a minute her white fingers were busy about the back 
of his broad neck. Then they sat down again, and 
neither spoke. Priscilla, with true feminine co- 
quetry, allowed that silence to last just long enough 
to be impressive, then broke through it with a smile. 

“You were talking two or three minutes ago of 
chestnuts, and how to cook them, Mr. Lepidus,” she 
said lightly, “ and do you know, as you spoke I could 
see the scene you described as vividly as though I 
had been there myself : the little Roman boy under 
his awning, his fir-cone fuel by his side, his goat- 
skin bag of chestnuts — you did say, by the way, he 
kept them in a goat-skin, did you not? ” 

“ They were in such a skin, Miss Smith, but I 
did not mention it.” 

“ I could actually smell the chestnuts as they 
roasted on the grid; the whole thing was as clear 
to me as though I had myself sent you across the 
Forum — the street, I mean — to buy me some ! What 
a charming power of description you have. Do tell 
me some more about Rome; have you lived there 
long, and when did you leave the great city? ” 

“ It was some time ago,” answered the Centurion, 
calmly, “ some considerable time ago.” Then, 


THE OLD LOVE AND THE NEW 135 


adroitly changing the subject, he went on to speak 
of other things of present interest. 

It was clear neither of them wanted me, I told my- 
self gloomily, as I turned on my heels; let them 
enjoy themselves as they chose. If Priscilla pre- 
ferred spending the evening with a stranger of un- 
known antecedents, I did not care, or at least, was 
not going to show it — and I went away to the hall, 
and sulked ostentatiously all the rest of the evening. 


CHAPTER X 


A CHAPTER OF ACCIDENTS 

P ERHAPS it was that fit of ill-temper which 
made me sleep late the next morning; be that 
as it may, the sun was abroad and strong on 
the windows before I woke, and there was that 
savour, of breakfast in the air which will penetrate 
at such an hour to the upper regions of even the best 
regulated households. The man who looked after 
me had twice rattled the brass hot-water can in the 
basin before I could get my senses together, and then 
when he had arranged my things to his liking and 
left, my opening eyes fell on the clean white shirt 
he had placed on a chair by the window. It was 
vexatiously dazzling in the sunshine. Why did he 
put it just there, I said to myself peevishly? “ These 
pampered domestics, drawing high wages for trivial 
services, are mostly nuisances,” and I shut my eyes 
again, wondering as I did so, with the melancholy 
philosophy of the sleeper awakened, what it was that 
made me so irritable. 

Then all of a sudden a thought of Lepidus and 
136 


A CHAPTER OF ACCIDENTS 137 


last night flashed across me. Yes, that was the cause 
of my ill-ease, and cause enough in all conscience. In 
a moment I was sitting up in bed, my chin upon my 
knees, angrily staring at my reflection in the mirror 
opposite. “ Yes, it was Lepidus who had upset me 
— how badly he had behaved! And Pris, too, a 
woman like her, versed in the regulations of society, 
ought not to have overlooked me on the first night 
of her coming. It was not civil to me as a host, let 
alone from the point of view of my other claims upon 
her. No doubt she had twice tried to draw me from 
my sulks later on in the evening, and had been twice 
repulsed for her pains ; but did she think I was going 
lightly to forget her visit to the conservatory with 
Lepidus, her pampering and talking with him for 
heaven only knows how long — why need she talk to 
anyone but me ? She never pinned down my collar ; 
never found my conversation interesting enough to 
make her forget her sense of propriety and good be- 
haviour/’ and I stared moodily at the angry, shock- 
haired fellow cuddling his knees in the looking-glass 
opposite. 

Still debating these things in my mind and won- 
dering whether my displeasure might be emphasised 
most to the individuals concerned by going break- 
fastless for a long lonely country walk, or by refus- 
ing to get up at all — for jealousy was making a per- 


138 LEPIDUS THE CENTURION 

1 

feet girl of me : while still thinking of these things, 
there came presently through the open window, 
along with the sunshine, and smell of late roses the 
sound of footsteps in the verandah below, followed 
by a pleasant woman laugh, and then a voice that 
was certainly the Roman’s, saying — 

“I am afraid I have tempted you to make your 
feet wet.” 

“ Oh, no,” replied the laugher, who was equally 
certainly Priscilla Smith, “ I always wear thick shoes 
in the country, and besides — they say to be out in 
the morning dew is the best possible thing for the 
complexion.” 

“ It would indeed be a sovereign specific, Miss 
Smith that was able to improve yours ! ” Then more 
pleasant laughter, and the speakers passed through 
the French casement into the house. 

I got out of bed immediately, and going over to 
the window, leaned out, lightly clad as I was. There 
was nothing to be seen; but a very distinct odour of 
fried kidneys, and other good things, which at a hap- 
pier time might have mollified me, was coming down 
the light morning breeze from the rearward of the 
Manor buildings. The morning itself was golden; 
the sunshine bringing up the still damp foliage in 
vivid contrasts over the shrubberies and distant hill- 
sides ; the stream course in the hollow marked by thin 


A CHAPTER OF ACCIDENTS 139 

strands of opal mist that died away in prismatic at- 
tenuation as I looked; the cedars on the lawn heavy 
with moisture hanging in glittering beads upon 
every needle point ; the lawn itself, silvery with dew 
— and across that tell-tale surface leading up to the 
verandah steps, a man and woman’s footmarks! 

Where had they been, and how long were they 
out? What a fool I was to lie between my frilled 
sheets while this swart adventurer made love to the 
girl that was all in all to me ! I turned at once and 
hurriedly dressed, but never had my sleeve-links been 
so reluctant to do their duty, never had my razor 
seemed so bloodthirsty, or my collar so cruelly can- 
tankerous as on that morning. However, I was 
ready at last, and going downstairs found them all 
busy at breakfast in the morning-room, Lepidus 
more than usual elated, and only Pris (who had 
found her way into the seat next mine) silent and 
thoughtful. In response to her distinctly gracious 
welcome I made a return which was barely polite, 
plunging into the interior mysteries of an egg and 
buttered toast, as though they were far more in- 
teresting than anything she on my left could say or 
do. 

I let Lepidus babble on, and coldly satisfied my 
mother’s distant inquiries as to the general state of 
my health, until after a time, under cover of an out- 


140 LEPIDUS THE CENTURION 


burst of laughter at the other end of the table, that 
fair and false lady at my side, leaned over and said 
to me in her gentlest voice — 

“ I hope you slept well, Mr. Louis ? ” 

That last word she had in her maide/i pride rarely 
used as yet to me ; now, though it was spoken so low 
as to be scarcely audible, there was both apology and 
wistfulness in it. It went right down into my heart, 
for I loved her greatly, and looking up for the first 
time, I saw her kind great eyes bent on me with a 
strange look I had never seen in them before. She 
was certainly very fair, and her morning's exercise 
had brought a lovely colour into her cheeks; well 
might the Roman have doubted whether any dew 
that ever fell from heaven could have improved them. 
Her thick soft hair was piled up on her shapely 
head, and tied with a pale green ribbon, the colour 
of a beech leaf in April; her dove-brown dress was 
trimmed with the same hue, there was not an orna- 
ment about that winsome wife-to-be of mine save the 
fresh red rose at her throat — and that was wet with 
dew! The Roman had given it to her, for certain, 
and the sight chilled my admiration to the bone. I 
jerked my spoon angrily into my empty egg-shell 
and blurted out my answer : 

“ Thanks, Miss Smith, I slept well enough, but 
did not wake so early as you did, or to such pleasant 


A CHAPTER OF ACCIDENTS 141 

appointments. I hope your feet are not wet after 
all?” 

For a minute she looked at me in surprise and 
wonder, then, as the Centurion’s before-breakfast 
remark came back to her mind, not knowing my 
bedroom window overhung the balcony, she jumped 
at the conclusion I had been eavesdropping some- 
where. The friendliness disappeared from her face, 
and a flush came up instead. 

“ Yes,” I went on, foolishly imagining I would 
win a wordy triumph of her, “ a lovely morning for 
a solitary ramble with a friend; a trifle wet under- 
foot perhaps, but if dew is a disadvantage there it 
adds to the value of a gift-rose like that of yours.” 

“ I have been out early this morning, Mr. Al- 
lanby,” said the lady, looking me straight in the 
face, “ and by chance I met your friend Marcus 
Lepidus. He did pick me this flower, and I took it, 
because the time has not yet come — it may never 
come — when I shall have given up my right to ac- 
cept so simple a civility without applying for per- 
mission. I am glad to see your mother is getting 
up from the table; I think I will go with her.” 

And to the mother she went, chin in air, and heart, 
if I could but have known it, all in a woeful flutter. 
As for me, I watched her across the room with the 
firm conviction of a lover that the passing disagree- 


I 4 2 


LEPIDUS THE CENTURION 


ment was the beginning of the end, and as I stood 
irresolute, eyes on floor, and cursing my boorishness, 
half impelled to go at once, and apologise, half 
urged by my pride to wait for her recantation, there 
came the fall of a broad hand on my shoulders, and 
a manly voice in my ear — 

“ Admiring your carpet pattern, eh, cousin Louis ? 
A right good invention, this coloured web of yours 
under foot, warmer than tesselated pavements by a 
long way, even with our heating flues thrown in, but 
nevertheless, not good enough to keep one in such 
a lovely morning as this. Come, they are talking of 
game and hunting yonder by the window — will you 
take us out ? I used to be rather a good shot with a 
cross-bow, and, if you can lend me one, should like 
to try my luck again.” 

“ We don’t use cross-bows now,” I exclaimed, my 
sporting instinct rising superior to my spleen. 

“What! slings then, like the Boeotians? Well, 
I have tried those too, and though I never killed any- 
thing with such a weapon, save on one occasion 
a slave who was sent to drive the game to us, yet 
I am not afraid to handle any man’s weapons — lend 
me a sling, cousin, and show me how to use it,” and 
thrusting his arm through mine, the Roman haled 
me off to the company yonder who were all agog to 


A CHAPTER OF ACCIDENTS 143 

get out and try our coverts for whatever they might 
contain. 

Thus it came about that half an hour later the 
younger men of the party were busy donning gaiters, 
and filling cartridge pouches, while I had drawn Lep- 
idus aside into the gun-room, and with a view to 
the safety of our life and limb, was giving him a 
hasty lecture on guns and ammunition. It was beau- 
tiful to see his grave surprise as I explained to him 
the properties of that deadly black dust — “ seed of 
lightning ” he called it at dinner that evening — 
which has revolutionised the world, and established 
for ever the sovereignty of man over beast. And 
his stoic pride would not allow him to show a tremor 
when I threw a spoonful of loose powder on the 
open fire, thereby filling the room for a moment with 
flames and smoke. I gave him an empty gun to 
handle, while I got down my own and then of course 
the Roman, as soon as my back was turned, must 
reach over for a full cartridge, load as I had shown 
him how to and pull the trigger! By the mercy of 
Providence the muzzle was pointed to the window, 
else had Caster Manor and all pertaining thereto 
passed “ in tail male ” to that distant swashbuckler 
cousin of mine who is cursing Providence and the 
laws of succession in a remote Californian township. 


144 


LEPIDUS THE CENTURION 


As it was, there followed a resounding report, a 
crash of glass, responsive female screams from vari- 
ous parts of the house, with a rush of feet in the 
passages, succeeded by an avalanche of anxious in- 
quirers through the doorway — the only individual 
absolutely unmoved, and inclined to view the inci- 
dent as a legitimate experiment in the property of 
explosives being the Centurion himself. 

Well, I quieted their fears, disarmed the Roman, 
and hurried off to get into my shooting clothes. 
Now as it happened, my way led through the con- 
servatory, and who should I find there but Pris her- 
self, standing with her back to me, and that inde- 
finable something about her whereby a woman indi- 
cates grief as expressively by her attitude as by her 
face. Indeed, there was the tag end of a cambric 
handkerchief peeping out from between the pretty 
fingers clasped over her eyes, while a succession of 
gentle throes shook her supple form from head to 
heel. Pris — and crying ! what lover would not have 
been moved and astonished. I advanced cautiously 
to her, forgetting everything in the emotion of the 
moment, and, half surprised at my own boldness, 
slipped an arm round that inviting waist. The lady 
was not startled, as I had supposed she would be, she 
did not even raise her eyes from the depth of her 
handkerchief, but an audible sob or two rose thence, 


A CHAPTER OF ACCIDENTS 145 


and slowly her pleasant scented head came over to 
my shoulder, nestling there while I gently took down 
the white wrists and supplied such comfort as my 
position warranted. 

“ And to what,” I asked presently, “ to what, may 
I ask, are these tears due ? ” 

“ Oh, I was so much frightened — desperately 
frightened,” whimpered Priscilla, after a minute or 
two’s work with her handkerchief. 

“ Frightened,” I answered, staring round for a 
possible cause of alarm, but seeing none. “ What 
at? — a mouse, a beetle — something trivial no doubt, 
for big things do not scare you women.” 

“ Oh, it was trivial enough,” exclaimed the lady, 
with another indignant sob, at the same time straight- 
ening herself up, and brushing the pretty hair back 
from her forehead. “ I knew you two were together, 
and remembering how horribly jealous you were at 
breakfast just now, thought that perhaps you had 
quarrelled, and — ” 

“ Had a duel with breech-loaders over the gun- 
room table ? ” I suggested, and my charming friend 
gave an affirmative sob as the touching picture rose 
before her, while her handkerchief went once again 
to her eyes. “ Pris ! ” I exclaimed, catching her 
hand with a thrill of delight at the idea those tears 
were for me, and essaying that most dangerous 


146 LEPIDUS THE CENTURION 


manoeuvre, the pressing of an advantage on a woman 
in retreat, “you thought / had been hurt? Pris, 
dearest, my beloved, it was me you were crying for, 
wasn’t it? Put your head down again and whisper 
it, so ” 

Whereon the charming enemy turned on my ad- 
vances : “ You ! ” she cried, taking her hand away, 

and drawing herself up., “ Oh, how dense you are ! 
Of course it was for the other one, Mr. Lepidus,” 
and wriggling from my clasp, she walked away to 
the inner door, leaving me aghast and speechless at 
her cynicism. And at the door she turned — saw my 
horror-stricken face — and bursting into the prettiest 
little laugh imaginable, threw me a kiss, and dis- 
appeared. 

So it was for me after all she was grieving. What 
a fool I had been not to guess it, or to let her escape 
so lightly ! “ Pris ! ” I cried, hurrying after her, 

“ Miss Smith — stay a minute, I have something to 
say to you,” and I rushed eagerly on her foot- 
steps into the drawing-room, but only to find she 
was not there. Into the side boudoir I charged, to 
discover it equally empty, then into the corridor 
leading through a by-way to the hall, where a glim- 
mer of a white dress showed for a second before it 
disappeared down the staircase lobby. After that 


A CHAPTER OF ACCIDENTS 


*47 


retreating skirt I went full tilt; it twinkled for a 
moment, at the top of the stairs where the open oak 
gallery runs across from wing to wing, and with 
my blood now roused I went up three steps at a time. 
It was not to be seen in the corridor, but it could not 
be far off, and was it likely I was going to give up 
the hunt with such a quarry afoot in front? 

Thinking that I had never seen Pris so sportive 
before, and with the remembrance of that last be- 
witching smile dancing before me, I rushed to the 
opposite end of the gallery, glancing down a possi- 
ble but empty passage or two, and then, deciding she 
had gone down a short flight of stairs ahead, 
bounded quickly down them. 

There was a turn at the bottom, and across it one 
of those portiere curtains my mother loves hanging 
from the ceiling to within eight inches of the ground. 
The two halves were drawn together so that I could 
see nothing beyond, but just underneath, close 
against the curtain, there was a bit of woman’s skirt- 
ing, and a pair of dainty shoes with silver buckles — 
Pris ! for certain, in hiding and going to give me a 
surprise ! — Gads ! we would see who would be most 
surprised, and without a moment for thought I 
uttered an Indian war whoop and leaping forward, 
adroitly wrapped the curtain round the fair figure 


148 LEPIDUS THE CENTURION 


beyond it, pulling her to me, and between the folds in 
spite of a stifled scream or two, kissed the half-seen 
face again and again with boyish exuberance. 

Then, and then only, was the fair captive allowed 
to escape, and judge of my horror, my consternation, 
when from the curtain struggled out in red-hot 
shame and confusion, not Priscilla Smith, but that 
winsome lady, Mrs. Milward herself! Worse still, 
as she swung the drapery aside, she disclosed a yard 
or two away a group of people she had been talking 
to when I made my onset, the excellent Bishop and 
his straight-laced spouse, my cousin Alice, and my 
mother, all in attitudes of the most picturesque alarm 
and amazement. We stood there, glaring speech- 
lessly at one another for a minute or two, and then 
the good Bishop said — 

“ Ahem!” 

It was a slight observation, but it let loose every- 
one’s tongue. 

“ You horrible, abominable, wicked, odious boy! ” 
gasped the pretty widow (though her eyes were not 
half so angry as her tongue) ; “ you have hurt my 
wrist horribly , and half pulled down my hair ” 

“ My dear Louis,” cried my parent at the same 
moment, “ are you out of your mind this morning? 
If you are going to let off guns and play at brigands 
like this all over the house, I shall really have to — ” 


A CHAPTER OF ACCIDENTS 


149 

I think she was going to say “ send you to school 
again.” 

As for the Bishop’s wife, she let off a little over- 
due scream which had apparently been delayed by 
the stress of her emotions, and subsided into a con- 
venient chair. 

“ Mother,” I said, advancing into the room, “ I am 
dreadfully sorry. I thought it was — well, I saw a 

foot under that d ,that hanging curtain of yours, 

I mean, and thought it was — well, Miss Smith’s.” 

At this the great lady of Pewchester looked inex- 
pressibly shocked, and the fair widow visibly 
pouted. Turning to her, I blundered wildly on : “ I 
owe you very many apologies indeed, dear Mrs. Mil- 
ward. Indeed, it was an utter accident: I had no 
idea it was you — I would never have done it, believe 
me, if I had.” 

“ Oh ! thanks,” said the little lady sarcastically, 
“ and since you are so very, very sorry, you had bet- 
ter go down on your knees — both, please — and tie 
my shoe-string which has come undone in the strug- 
gle — I shall, of course, fully report your playfulness 
to Miss Smith; I am sure she will be gratified.” 

And humbly I had to tie the lady’s shoe-strings, 
under the mild laughter of her friends, and then, 
crest-fallen enough, as you may imagine, to go in 
search of my shooting things, and the Roman. 


CHAPTER XI 


A STRANGE DISCOVERY 

W ERE this a diary of human sport I should 
joy in describing what we did that morn- 
ing, for I have in an extreme degree that 
common power of shutting my eyes to the suffering 
of lower things when such suffering ministers to 
my own pleasure, being at once the most compassion- 
ate and bloodthirsty of individuals. But, alas ! it is 
my duty to write here as the hunted, not the hunter; 
as the helpless quarry of the gods, the plaything of 
their moods, the sport of a strange chance; so I 
must pass lightly over my own humble pleasures that 
the chronicle of their superior sport may not be kept 
waiting. 

We shot the rhododendron coverts first, finding a 
fair sprinkling of pheasants there, with more rabbits 
than should have been so near my mother’s cherished 
flowers. For the first shot or two Lepidus had been 
a terror to me. A gun, of course, he would have, and 
equally, of course, I kept close at his elbow, on the 
watch to protect the safety of my guests and my own 
1 5 ° 


A STRANGE DISCOVERY 15 1 

humble life, but, as a matter of fact, the anxiety was 
needless. With that quick comprehension which he 
sometimes seemed to draw from my understanding, 
rather than from his own, the Centurion learnt how 
to manage his weapon, as he learnt everything else, 
in a marvellously short space of time. 

“ What ! ” he said, as the first rabbit dashed out 
into the path in front of us and sped away with its 
little white tail twinkling between the dead grass 
stems, “ what, shoot him while he runs; no, not if I 
know it; that would be a shocking waste of your 
bolts, my good cousin. Let us wait patiently, and 
we will find him in the nets you have no doubt 
spread lower down, and there we will shoot him 
with twice the certainty.” 

With a shameful glance round, to make sure no 
one had heard this scandalous proposition, I pointed 
out its error, and after a good deal of persuasion, got 
the Roman to try a moving shot. Twice he fired far 
behind, as was only natural, but the third time he 
made a brilliant hit. It was a cock pheasant, and I 
saw Imperial Rome’s face light with pleasure as he 
bent over it. “ Jove! ” he said, “ you must be a rich 
man to shoot such birds as these. Why, when I was 
last down in Gaul there were not more than a couple 
of dozen in the country, every one of them valued at 
a freeman’s ransom.” 


152 LEPIDUS THE CENTURION 


“ Then,” I exclaimed, “ if there were so few as 
that, you probably know how the first came over — it 
is a problem that has stretched the imagination of a 
hundred sporting writers.” 

“ Everyone knows that.” 

“ No, but everyone who handles a gun would be 
glad to.” 

Whereon the Roman, plucking the pheasant's tail 
feathers out, to the horror of the keeper behind us, 
said, as he arranged them artistically in his hat- 
band, “ It was all that insatiable glutton Marius — 
you knew him, perhaps ? ” 

“ No!” 

“ Well, never mind. He had the smallest heart 
for fighting they said, and the biggest stomach for 
quaint provender of any man we ever brought over. 
He had a fancy one day to give a feast to the local 
barbarians, and of course, some of these birds had to 
figure at it. A dozen were sent alive in a crate all 
the way up through Gaul, and though eleven of them 
died on the road, and were far gone towards our 
common distintegration when they arrived, Marius 
ate them — he would have eaten a satyr chop itself 
had it been fashionable or costly enough. 

“ And the twelfth one? ” 

“ Ah ! she, poor beast, had turned prolific on the 
journey, and when the crate came to hand was sit- 


A STRANGE DISCOVERY 


*53 


ting, with the deathless instinct of her sex, on some 
few eggs in one corner of it. Marius ate her too, 
of course, but the eggs his steward put under a 
common fowl, and three or four hatched out in 
time. They bred, and, as I say, had multiplied to a 
score or more when I was sent up here.” 

So that was how it happened, I thought to myself 
as I dropped two more cartridges into my gun, and 
listened to the solution at first hand of a riddle that 
no one but Lepidus could have answered. How 
strange that the appetite of one vainglorious glutton 
should have given joy to a hundred generations of 
sportsmen, and an income to every English shire 
from Thames to Tweed! Poor hen, great-grand- 
mother of all pheasants since, and to be! And all 
that afternoon I religiously abstained from hurting 
any of the sex, in reverence of her memory. 

Well, we shot through the coverts round the 
garden, then over a furzy ridge 'to the right, and af- 
terwards towards the ridgy lands along the river 
hollow about a mile from home. The Centurion, as 
soon as he learnt the art of aiming well ahead, and 
not dwelling on the shot, had distinguished himself 
greatly, his victims adding materially to the bag. 
For the most part he seemed altogether absorbed in 
the sport, and deeply engrossed in the working of 
the dogs — my pet spaniels — whom he had com- 


i54 


LEPIDUS THE CENTURION 


menced by calling weakly, velvet-coated curs, hav- 
ing heaven knows what ancient breed of shaggy 
boar-hounds in his mind’s eye. For the most part he 
seemed absorbed in these things, but now and then, 
as we rounded a corner or crossed some bluff, he 
would stop to stare uneasily about him, while en- 
joyment gave way to perplexity in his expressive 
face, and his eyes roamed from hill to hill, or up 
and down the glen, like one who strives to recog- 
nise some dimly remembered locality and but half 
succeeds. 

He looked here and there wistfully for a time, 
until we came round a shoulder of the low hills, 
and saw right before us a grassy spur jutting out 
into the river flats. It was dead level on top, with 
brambly thickets rising above it where it started 
at right-angles from the mainland ridge, while its 
two sides were grassy, and dropped down by easy 
slopes towards the stream, which here took a sharp 
bend and thus nearly encompassed it. Down the 
glen you could see right away into the dim moun- 
tain borderland in the west, while in the opposite 
direction the view went back to the wooded knolls 
surrounding the Manor House, and the trail of the 
great main road over which for unnumbered genera- 
tions the traffic of many shires had passed to and 
fro. I often thought what a fine place it would be 


A STRANGE DISCOVERY 


i55 


for a house, and time and again had taken a book 
out to sit for hours under the honeysuckle tangles 
of the hill above, delighting my eye with the scenery, 
and submitting happily, through long summer after- 
noons, to the influence which, like the soft crooning 
of a mother in the ear of a sleeping babe, filled me 
with unexplained contentment. You may depend 
on it we are more closely connected with the good 
mother Earth than we know of, and I for my part 
feel her pulses in my veins now and then with 
strange distinctness. There are places I can never 
go to without sadness, though nothing unhappy 
associates with them, and they are often enticing in 
every other respect; there are others where there 
is elation in the very soil, and pride and inspiration 
in the air that no surroundings explain. There are 
still others, and this grassy peninsula was one of 
them, that whisper wordless stories in my ear, 
strong and real, though they are reducible to no 
shape or speech.* 

We came out presently on the hill behind that 
bluff, its smooth grassy top below us of four or 
* Omar Khayyam seems to have experienced something of 
the same feelings: 

“ I sometimes think that never blows so red 
The Rose as where some buried Caesar bled; 

That every Hyacinth the Garden wears 
Dropt in its lap from some once lovely Head.’* 


156 LEPIDUS THE CENTURION 

five acres seared, as pastures will be in autumn, by 
much sunshine, and at once the Roman walking 
by my side stopped as though rooted to the ground, 
while his eyes stared fixedly at the meadow in front. 

“ The place,” he said excitedly, in a minute, “ the 
very place ! I knew it was ; and the house, the very 
house — surely you see it, or is it only in my mind? ” 

“ What house? I see none.” 

“ Not see it,” cried the Roman, pointing his hand 
eagerly towards the knoll. “ Why, the villa, the 
Prefect’s house. Jove! it fashions on my remem- 
brance until I know not whether I see it in sub- 
stance or no. Look at the long white sweep of 
hall and colonnade against the dark of the woods 
beyond the pillared verandah; the steep, red tiles 
above; the peep of wide inner courtyard through 
the portico; the blue doves on the roof; the mangy 
boar-hound yawning on the terrace steps — surely 
you see it ? ” 

“ There is nothing there, Lepidus.” 

“ Nothing! how strange! No cluster of reed- 
thatched slave huts nestling in the coppice beyond? 
No trim garden between the villa and the slope? 
No war-stakes half hid in roses all along the brow, 
and zigzag terraced paths — good for defence or 
loitering on a summer evening?” And the strong 
Roman in his agitation gripped my arm, and stared 


A STRANGE DISCOVERY 


*57 


in front of him as though indeed he saw that thing 
he spoke of. 

Then he stared up and down the valley again for 
some minutes, eagerly drinking in the remembered 
scenery, until, when his eyes came back to the grassy 
promontory once more, apparently the vision had 
gone. 

“ Perhaps you are right, after all ! ” he said, in 
a quieter tone ; “ nevertheless the hard ground does 
not lie, if my mind does. Come, and I will show 
you.” 

Fortunately the other shooters had gone far 
ahead, so sending our gun-bearer, a dull unobservant 
fellow, after them, with word that they were not 
to wait, for we would catch them up later on, the 
Roman and I walked towards the plateau. About 
fifty yards from it, where the miniature table-land, 
dotted with golden-flowered rag-wort spread out 
beneath us, and the path dipped down through the 
overhanging bank, he stopped again and pointing 
to the level acres, scorched as I have said, by sum- 
mer suns, cried out : “ I was right ! Look, see how 
the foundations show, look at the lines and patches 
lying like a map on the meadow — I was right ! ” 
and then for the first time I saw with vague wonder 
that it was as he said. The summer had been hot 
and dry, the short vegetation indicated, as it always 


158 LEPIDUS THE CENTURION 


does under such circumstances, by its varying tint 
the depth of the soil lying on broken wall-tops and 
pavements below, and there to my astonished eyes 
was the complete plan of a great house laid out in 
browns and greens under our eyes. “ Come on ! ” 
cried the Centurion, flinging my forty-guinea 
breech-loader into a ditch, “ come on, Britisher/' 
and seizing hold of me by the wrist, he raced me 
down the slope. The great roan cattle lying in 
the hawthorn shade glared at us as we broke into 
their seclusion, then floundered hurriedly to their 
knees and feet, staying for one parting look of 
amazement before they broke in panic down the 
hillside. But Marcus Lepidus had eyes for nothing 
save the chequered field before him. As eager as a 
sleuth-hound on the trail, he dragged me round the 
grassy plateau, tracing each line or patch where the 
sun-burnt grass indicated foundations lying just 
below. 

“ Here was the porch ! ” he exclaimed, striding 
up a tiny southward slope, “ and here the peris- 
tylium — see the great square on its further bound- 
ary, marked by yonder line of parchment grass ; and 
that green, swampy patch, with the damp grass 
and sedge, lies where the foundation was. And 
here beyond we had our store and sleeping-rooms. 
Here was the tepidarium, and next it the cold-water 


A STRANGE DISCOVERY 


159 


bath — often and often my teeth have chattered on 
this spot as the slaves dowsed me at dawn in your 
accursed March weather. Here was the further 
court, the great cryptoporticus around it, the stump 
of a marble column under every grassy hummock 
there all along the edge.” 

Going for a minute to the green brink of the 
escarpment, he looked eagerly up and down the 
valley, then turned back to the villa and wrung his 
hands, more moved perhaps than I had seen him 
yet. “All gone!” he cried; “gone the red-boled 
fir-woods on the hillside, and the white-stoned 
meadow path to the water-holes! Gone the villa, 
and the colonnades and the people! Where are 
they, comrade? — where are the brass-clad legion- 
aries; and the naked British children; and the tall 
dogs quarrelling over yesterday’s refuse; and the 
white oxen munching their hay by the stone- 
wheeled carts in the courtyard; and the hucksters 
in their sheds bartering Gaulish stuffs for new- 
plucked boar fangs, or wolf skins ? ” 

“Who knows?” I answered, trying gently to 
soothe him in his moment of grief ; “ but we at least 
are here, and that is something.” 

“ But where are they cried the Roman, stamp- 
ing his foot on the hollow turf, “ where are those 
brown-skinned villains I led in many a blood raid, 


i6o LEPIDUS THE CENTURION 


where are my jolly comrades of the XXth Legion, 
the drunken Marius, and Postumus, whose spirit not 
even a northern winter could kill? Where is old 
Carinus, where that sweet lady Otacilia, his wife, 
who squeezed the British of tribute from here to 
Solway? And where is Prisca Quintilia, light of 
foot and dimpled with laughter? Jove!” he ex- 
claimed, quite carried away by the inspiration of the 
place, “ I remember that last evening when the bar- 
barians burnt the villa, as if it were yesterday. We 
had no thought of them when the sun went down, 
and when it got up we were ourselves on the way 
to be forgotten ! Red it went down in the west, and 
as the fiery stain climbed up the marble pillars and 
made the tiles blaze for a time, all the far hillside, 
there across the stream, was smitten with copper. 
And the cattle coming home to stall were monstrous 
golden beasts before they dipped into the valley 
shadows; and the shepherd on the bare grass ridge 
towered gigantic over a golden Jason flock. Near 
at hand the clustering pigeons’ wings were dipped 
in blood — good omen of the coming fury — the very 
fountain in the open inner court where the fading 
daylight came to it through the porticoes spurted 
blood eaves high. It was such an evening as one 
remembers sometimes; and I had come home from 
the hunting, and crossing the trim-kept garden flat, 


A STRANGE DISCOVERY 


161 


there was the maid herself, subdued by the evening 
quiet, standing like a statue done in ruddy metal 
against the white alabaster lintels. And I went to 
her; and she was kinder and sadder than her cus- 
tom ; and whereas before she had kept me at arm’s 
length, now she came to my strength, nestling like 
a bird to me, so that my heart swelled over her. 

By all the gods she was nearly mine that night ! I 
led her back into the shadows, where a stone Cupid 
on a marble block gave us shelter, and there I had 
her in my arms, while the gold fire turned to purple 
dusk above — wooing her to my hungering wishes all 
I knew — had her head upon my shoulder, felt her 
bosom beating through my hunting tunic, and the 
fluttering of her white fingers in my prison hand. 
Were we not the only two of our kind in all these 
marches; near in quality; alike in age? She came 
to me as the river comes to the sea, devious and coy 
perhaps, and maiden slow when the inevitable 
loomed big ahead, but just as certainly. And that 
night she was all but mine; I knew it by the red 
stain the sunset had left upon her cheeks, and her 
trembling. 

“ And then, as I waited in the dead hush of the 
evening for her answer, her fingers lifted to my 
lips, my head bent to catch her assenting whisper, 
there came a kern upon a ragged pony, flying down 


162 


LEPIDUS THE CENTURION 


the near hillside. He burst through our palisades, 
and, smothered with mud and foam, gasping with 
haste and news, galloped to the very portico and 
screamed out — ‘ The dogs are on us ! The Britons 
up; and all the moorland roads crowded with foe- 
men! ’ 

“ You know the rest,” he said, after a minute, 
“ how they came and surged here round the pali- 
sades, trampling the flower thickets into bloody 
mud, like a pack of hungry wolves; how we cut 
our way out by the light of those burning roofs, 
that made another crimson sunset on the hillsides; 
how the slaves screamed on the British spear-heads ; 
and burning flesh smoked in the cool courtyards 
where an hour before that girl was hand-in-hand 
with me — ” and the Roman bent his head and, 
from old habit, made as though he would hide his 
face in his toga. 

I spoke to him as best I could, though for a fact 
the things he described touched my perception to 
the quick with a sharp instinctive appreciation of 
their truth. How could I doubt that his ancient 
home was here under-foot, and yet how wonderful it 
was that he should be by me, he who knew that 
immensely ancient Britain, and whose tantalising, 
disjointed scraps of memory were like illuminated 
pages torn from some great story book wherein 


A STRANGE DISCOVERY 


163 


you could see the same scheme, though the sequence 
was all astray. There, as I looked, along the level 
sward were the long lines of the courtyards and 
walls slightly ridged and marked by dried-up 
grasses. On the steep river-ward slope faint indica- 
tions of the terrace showed even now amongst 
bracken and bramble, and even the path to the 
watering spot he had spoken of could be followed 
here and there where an ancient flagstone lay bare 
and broken in the soft green meadow sward. “ I 
believe! ” I said, “ it is as you say, Lepidus, for cer- 
tain.” And then, not daring to give the emotion 
in me play, I turned after a minute to the practical : 
“ It is as you say, for certain, and to-morrow we 
will dig it all up to make certain doubly sure — 
shall we, Lepidus ? ” 

“ Oh, dig by all means,” he answered, coldly ; and 
then, as I saw he was still brooding deeply over 
the thing he had chanced upon, and as the after- 
noon was getting late, I led him gently away, join- 
ing the other shooters later on, and eventually get- 
ting home without further incident. 

That same evening I sent for our bailiff, a most 
devoted man, who would have exhumed his own 
grandmother had I expressed a wish to inspect her 
bones, and to him I briefly explained the nature 
of our find, with my wish that ten men should set 


1 64 LEPIDUS THE CENTURION 


to work to uncover it the first thing in the morning. 
When the story was done he appeared buried in 
thought. “ What is it, Andrews ? ” I asked. “ Are 
you surprised at a Roman house being there ? ” 

“ No, sir, it's not that/’ answered the man, re- 
flectively turning his hat in his hand. “ I was think- 
ing what we’d do with the red heifers if we dug 
up all that pasture; it’s as sweet a bite as any in 
the country. You see, sir, there’s as many sheep 
on the twenty-acre croft as it will carry; the high 
lees haven’t sprouted yet, for what rain we have 
had has run off them like water off tiles, and the 
low meads I was saving till keep got scarcer. 
There’s Farmer Morgan’s ten-acre pasture by the 

mill pool — he would rent that ” 

“ Good,” I replied, marvelling how different the 
same subject can look to diverse minds, “ let the 
red cows go to the mill pool, and, Andrews, mind 
you, tell the men to dig tenderly to-morrow, and 
to save anything they light upon, though it is but 
the paring of a Roman toe-nail.” 


CHAPTER XII 


WE PICNIC WITH OUR ANCESTORS 

T HE following morning happened to be wet, 
and curiously enough, though I was all agog 
with interest about our find of yesterday, 
my Centurion was comparatively indifferent. That 
he had forgotten it was unlikely; there was indeed, 
a substratum of seriousness in his lightest remark, 
which seemed to show he still brooded over it. But 
he was not openly interested, and though I stole a 
visit to the excavations in my heavy mackintoshes, 
he preferred to stay and card wool all day with 
my enamoured but insipid cousin Alice. The others 
followed their inclinations according to the estab- 
lished usage of a country house in wet weather, 
and thus I was left to myself. 

Smoking and idling about the Manor that after- 
noon, eagerly watching a patch or two of blue in 
the western sky blossom through the rain clouds, 
I presently found myself ruminating over some 
glazed cases of antiquities we had in our hall. I 
165 


166 LEPIDUS THE CENTURION 


loved those things. They were to others dusty curi- 
osities, in value according to the pence a dealer 
would give for them, at best mildly interesting to 
vapid minds, and at worst cumberers of space, ugly 
and pointless. But to me they were magic. The 
gloss and sheen came back to that colourless rag 
labelled “ From a Tomb,” as I looked. I could 
see the very face, and the interest in the face, of her 
who once appraised it on the mercer’s bench; I 
could see her draw it' through her fingers while yet 
it was brand-new from the looms, glancing as she 
did so at the huckster’s eyes to read whether she 
was going to get it at her price or his. And that 
little cracked phial for tears; there was nothing in 
it now; it was a jest to many, but to me its iri- 
descent surface spoke instantly of the parti-coloured 
life of her who owned it so long ago, the life which 
was certainly so much like that of any girl here 
about us; a little universe of time in itself between 
two great hushes; and as I touched the little phial 
tenderly for the sake of her who once filled it with 
the elixir of sorrows, my own eyes smarted in com- 
passion for those long dead griefs ! 

And the dead finger crept back into that ring that 
had been found with the tear-bottle, a strong 
finger that had done its measure of work and 
play, had gone home and taken its wages endless 


WE PICNIC WITH OUR ANCESTORS 167 

ages ago. There was a space in it where a gem had 
once been. To my mother and the others I found 
that hollow was bare, but to me it was red, always 
red with the shine of the ruby that had once filled 
it. Where was that stone now? Such things live 
for ever; on whose finger was it, and what of its 
history between those wide sundered hands? 

Then that bronze buckler again, with the neat vel- 
vet backing of our museum case showing through 
the ragged hole near the centre, and the green hue 
of ages almost hiding the twining letters upon it, 
like moss on a village tombstone? One who dealt 
in such things, a gentleman from Birmingham, once 
told me that that stab hole took at least eighteen 
pence off the value of the article — but he was mis- 
taken! I did not tell him so: I merely said I was 
content. He knew nothing of the strong soul that 
had flitted out like a bat from that hole on the day 
it was made. To him the shield was but a lot on an 
auctioneer’s catalogue, only worse or better than 
any others as it approached the full round perfec- 
tion of a new tin pot, and there was an end of it. So 
it was with all the other things in those modest cases 
of ours. To others they might be trivial in value, 
meaningless in purpose, but to me they were very 
pages of the past, and as I pondered over the frag- 
ments, the inspirations which arose from them were 


i68 


LEPIDUS THE CENTURION 


like the fumes which made yesterday, today, and 
to-morrow all one to the Delphic priestess. 

Thus trifling, I spent a wet afternoon, and on the 
following morning we were to go in a body to see 
what progress had been made with the practical 
work of excavation. 

I had intended that the investigation of the Ro- 
man villa, if a public function, should at least be a 
grave and dignified one. The visitors were to ap- 
proach with chastened minds the vestiges of a mag- 
nificent past, and I hoped that its sobering influence 
might act on even the most frivolous of them. 
But there are certain people to whom ruins always 
suggest ham sandwiches, and the silence properly 
dwelling about the sacred places of the remote an 
incentive to buffoonery. Mrs. Milward unhappily 
belonged to the first class, and Smythers of Balliol, 
one of our Oxford students, to the second. 

“ Ruins ! ” cried the little widow excitedly, as we 
talked the matter over at the tea-table. “ Oh, how 
jolly! and the weather is clearing up just at the 
right time. Dear Mrs. Allanby, do let us make a 
picnic of it ; we can have out the drag ; Miss Smith 
and I will pack a perfectly delightful hamper to- 
night. Three cold chickens,” she exclaimed, rap- 
turously turning her eyes up to the ceiling, and enu- 
merating on her round fingertips the things to be 


WE PICNIC WITH OUR ANCESTORS 169 


taken; “a ham, all the rest of that huge Melton 
Mowbray pie — I know there is plenty left, because 
I came down in my dressing-gown after you had all 
gone to bed last night, and got cook to give me 
another slice — a cherry tart, and pastry; bread and 
cheese, and lots of drink for these thirsty men — 
oh! we will have fun, dear Mrs. Allanby; please let 
me help to get everything ready ! ” 

“ And cigars to smoke, and cushions to go to 
sleep upon while Louis gives us one of his interest- 
ing lectures on antiquity,” quoth Mullens, the sculp- 
tor, from the other end of the room. 

“ And we won’t go home till morning,” sang the 
ribald Smythers. “ I will bring my accordion, and 
we will make a regular jolly Easter Monday, Bank 
Holiday excursion of it.” 

It is unnecessary to say this was not what I had 
intended. But nothing could now be done. The 
find had been announced, these dear barbarians had 
rashly been invited to inspect the dust of their 
ancestors, and there was no putting them off. So 
I groaned in spirit while submitting with as much 
grace as might be, and the next day, shortly after 
noon, we started. 

Our party pretty well filled the drag, and there 
was a nice little quarrel for places during which I 
observed with grim cynicism that Smythers had not 


LEPIDUS THE CENTURION 


170 

only brought his musical instrument, but had donned 
for the occasion the role of funny man, in that guise 
doing his utmost to deprive our “bean-feast,” as 
he called it, of the last semblance of dignity. One 
would have thought also that the party were going 
for a month’s excursion by the amount of wraps, 
small luggage, umbrellas, fishing-rods, sketching 
materials, and so on brought with them, but that is 
an habitual peculiarity of your picnicker. Eventually 
the miniature riot smoothed down, everybody being 
seated save the Bishop, for whom a place had been 
reserved close by the sculptor, and as he approached, 
the accordion-man struck up “ Tommy, make room 
for your Uncle,” to which classic strains we started. 

What, I thought to myself as I helped my cousin 
into her dust cloak, and rescued Mrs. Milward’s 
glove, which my mother’s terrier was worrying in 
the thicket of legs and skirts under the seat — what 
would the brass-clad Praetorians, and the black- 
browed matrons, whose ancient dwelling-place we 
were going to see, have thought of us? What 
would they think could they see us now? Would 
they be proud of their descendants mentally, mor- 
ally, or physically? It was a doubtful question. And 
what was Lepidus thinking ? I had not noticed him 
all the day. Nervously tucking the carriage rug 
under me as these fancies passed across my mind I 


WE PICNIC WITH OUR ANCESTORS 171 

pulled it off the Bishop’s legs, and had to apologise 
and straighten it again, before glancing up at the 
Centurion. I need not have troubled. The Roman 
was seated on the luncheon hamper by the coachman 
— Smythers being on the other side of him — beam- 
ing with fun and good humour. It was only in 
solitude, or with me alone, that the past came upon 
him; in the full shine of day, amongst men and 
women, he was one of them, aggressively happy in 
his borrowed vitality. At the moment, he had a 
cigar stuck in the corner of his mouth, his hat a 
little tipped to one side, and the accordion in his 
hands, wherefrom, under his companion’s guidance, 
he was eliciting doleful music that made even the 
horses fidgety. 

Leaning over to Priscilla I said, with a sugges- 
tion of contempt in my tone, “ He seems happy, 
doesn’t he ? ” 

“ Yes,” she answered, without looking towards 
the Roman, and to my satisfaction I thought there 
was an expression of the same thought in her face. 
Thus encouraged — for there had been an uneasy 
fancy in my mind that the day was to be my rival’s 
wholly, I pressed my advantage, and when presently 
some of us dismounted to ease the horses up a 
stiff bit of hill I made an opportunity of asking Miss 
Smith to take a short cut across the fields with me. 


172 LEPIDUS THE CENTURION 


It was a lover’s privilege readily gained when my 
mother backed me; the accordion-man struck up 
“ Pretty Polly Perkins,” as the coach went out of 
our sight — and I was alone with Pris on the well- 
screened hedge path. 

How good the clover flowers smelt after yes- 
terday’s rain, how splendidly the lark sang some- 
where under the silver canopy of the great clouds 
drifting away into the west! There was an indefi- 
nite tenderness I had never noticed in the summer 
air drifting over the thyme and parsley beds, and 
linking her and me in faintly eddying bonds; en- 
couragement in the low musical babble of the stream 
coming up from the neighbouring hollow ; and I was 
gently, diffidently happy. We sat down on a log 
under a hazel, and I had her ungloved hand in mine. 
A strand or two of her hair I remember, gleaming 
like red gold as the sunlight ran down it, blew across 
my face, and I lifted that hand and reverently kissed 
its finger-tips. 

“ You do love me, Pris,” I asked presently, “ you 
really do — better than anyone else? ” 

“ Yes,” she said, keeping her face turned away — 
yes, and yes again, under her breath, until it al- 
most seemed that she was insisting on the' fact to her 
own sweet mind rather than speaking to me. 

It was enough : I was not critical, and lapsed into 


WE PICNIC WITH OUR ANCESTORS 173 


happy silence by her side. Yet it was impossible for 
me not to feel that there was something between us ; 
sweet she was, gentle, and yielding, yet the brave, 
truthful face was not altogether at rest as I should 
have liked it to be, and once when I looked up sud- 
denly there were prospective tears glistening under 
her lashes. It was she that spoke next. 

“ Louis,” she began with an obvious effort, “ I 
want to say something to you, but cannot 

“ Out with it Pris. What can there be you can- 
not say to me?” 

“No, no, no ! ” answered my companion, strug- 
gling with her woman’s emotions, “ nothing in the 
world can make me say it ; you would think me hor- 
rible, unmaidenly — and yet — oh! if it were said, 
and done with, that would give confidence and 
strengthen me ” 

“ Tell me, dearest,” I pleaded, slipping an arm 
round her waist, “ tell me — nowhere in the world 
could you have a more tender listener.” 

But she only shook her head violently, and now 
it was “ No, no, no ! ” followed by a show of tears, 
and an almost fierce cry that she was “ sorry she 
had ever come to Caster; she would go away the 
very next day ” — and so on. 

What man would possibly make anything of this? 
I could but comfort her in my rough way, until 


*7 4 


LEPIDUS THE CENTURION 


presently she eyed me through the corner of her 
half-dried lids and, seeing I was stupid still, made 
believe to change the subject — though in fact she 
did not — and after a pause, said casually, “ The 
summer is going very fast.” 

“ Yes,” was my answer — glad to be on tangible 
ground again. 

“ And after the summer will come autumn. Eng- 
lish autumns are very short.” 

“ Why, Pris, ’tis a way autumns have — to follow 
close behind the summer.” 

“ And then winter,” said the lady, dropping her 
voice, and flushing curiously as she pushed a little 
grasshopper from her knee — “ the winter, when no 
one travels! ” 

How it was I know not, but something in her 
voice and the mention of travel (I had promised her 
a lengthy honeymoon abroad) showed her meaning 
to my sluggish mind. “ Good heavens, Pris ! ” I 
cried, leaping to my feet and blurting out my dis- 
covery with manly brutality, “ you mean when will 
I — when are we to get married? Forgive me, 
dearest, but I have been so happy in the present, that 
I have never ventured even to think of that; but 

since you wish it ” Instead of resenting my 

bluntness, Pris merely replied with sweet grav- 
ity that “ it was advisable.” So I slipped my arm 


WE PICNIC WITH OUR ANCESTORS 175 


in hers, for she had risen now, and found myself, 
as we sauntered slowly towards the picnic place 
settling dates, places, and all the details of that 
episode with amazing calmness. 

Only long afterwards did I know from her own 
self what had urged her thus to bring me to the 
point; only then did I find out that, like the brave 
girl she was, she had recognised with terror deep 
down in her soul the germ of a new love beginning ; 
had felt without understanding the deadly fascina- 
tion of that other man’s ancient claim upon her, and 
had gone the straightest way she knew of to put her- 
self beyond the possibility of doubt, and to settle the 
matter out of hand. 

Down at the Villa we found things in full swing. 
The diggers had worked for two days in the light 
soil like ants, and the whole ground-plan of the an- 
cient mansion was laid bare. Lepidus has described 
it for me, so I will say no more than that all he had 
told of was verified ; every court and chamber in the 
palace was as he had said, though, of course, some- 
what shorn of its splendour. The whole place was 
a wondrous labyrinth of crumbling walls and pave- 
ments, broken marble steps and fallen pillars. The 
main courtyard they had cleared, all except a small 
mound crowned by a hawthorn near the centre. 
Round that half-removed hummock spades and 


176 LEPIDUS THE CENTURION 


broom had laid bare a fine sweep of tesselated pave- 
ment, not quite perfect, for tree-roots had forced it 
up or subsidences cracked it, but still wonderful 
enough in its green and white scrollery, its vines 
and doves, and complex pattern centring towards 
that mid-spot under the hawthorn where, I guessed 
at once, the Cupid had stood by which my Roman 
had made love to Priscilla I scarcely dared think 
how many years ago. And there was that sprig of 
ancient royalty, as we came upon the scene, joyously 
indifferent to the things that had moved him so 
much a few hours before, helping to lay a modern 
tablecloth upon a classic spot, and shouting for the 
corkscrew or bread platter as he spread the meal, as 
though he had no other thoughts in the world. 

“ Come on, cousin Louis ! ” he shouted across 
the courtyard. “ Every man here has got to earn 
his provender — to you falls the hearth-place. 
Sticks, man, and faggots! lots of them, please; 
plunder your ancestral hedges and the turf heaps. 
You will find the kettle in the verandah, and Smyth- 
ers has matches.” 

So I set to work at that great recreation which 
makes happy children of the oldest of us, and, toss- 
ing my coat into a corner, was soon “ wrestling 
with my ancestral hedges.” 


CHAPTER XIII 


LOVE, THE IMMORTAL 

F ROM an outside point of view it was as good 
a picnic as one could wish. The kettle boiled 
without upsetting: the corkscrew had not 
been forgotten, and it was not powdered sugar this 
time in the salt-cellar or vice versa. Also my mother 
had sent away the servants, so that we lunched in 
peace and enjoyed the trivial discomforts which it 
is their duty to minister to. Lepidus was presiding 
at the game pie, magnificent and radiantly happy. 
The sculptor spent the greater part of the meal in 
mixing a gigantic salad, which he then proceeded to 
eat. Mrs. Milward accumulated all the pleasantest 
things in her neighbourhood with unblushing as- 
siduousness ; Smythers played what he called appro- 
priate music while the plates were being changed; 
and his own precentor would scarcely have recog- 
nised the good Bishop in his new character of gen- 
eral handy-man and useful “ super.” 

That pillar of the Church had, towards the end of 
the meal, been sent off to the hampers to bring up a 
big cherry tart, of which my mother was justly 
177 


178 LEPIDUS THE CENTURION 


proud, and approaching us with it screened under a 
napkin, much as John the Baptist’s head was brought 
in to Herod, met with a slight mishap. We were all 
at the moment watching Mullens’s struggles with a 
refractory claret cork, each of us giving him advice 
at once — advice we were secretly very glad we had 
not personally to put into practice — when a plaintive 
wail went up from the direction of what we called 
the larder, and there, as we hastily turned, before 
our eyes was his portly lordship, with the cherry tart 
still borne bravely at arms’ length, slowly sinking 
into the solid earth. What had happened, what could 
be happening to him? It was so grotesque, so sin- 
gular to see him shortening inch by inch, while he 
clutched the pastry, shouting for help the while, that 
I doubted my own senses : a terrible idea came upon 
me that for once I had done wrong to drink all that 
bottled beer and claret-cup, and was beginning to 
see a little crooked. Indeed, the same fancy must 
in some form or other have occurred to everyone, 
for none moved while the great Churchman “ set ” 
solemnly into the solid earth like a disappearing 
sun, gaiter-deep, knee-deep, thigh-deep; and only 
when he was up to his waist, and apparently 
still going steadily towards the lower regions, did 
the horror of the situation dawn on us, and, Lepi- 
dus leading of course, we sprang to the rescue. 


LOVE, THE IMMORTAL 


179 


“ Oh ! please, please, save the pastry,” cried Mrs. 
Mil ward, wringing her jewelled fingers, while the 
Roman gave a yell that would have carried conster- 
nation into a British camp, and led us across the 
tesselated pavement. When we got to the Bishop, 
we found him belt-deep in a hole of his own making, 
and naturally somewhat agitated. It was only after 
we had laid hands on him from all sides, and dragged 
him forth with scant ceremony, that we found the 
explanation of the mishap. His lordship had walked, 
without knowing it, across one of those ancient hot- 
air chambers the Romans made beneath their dwell- 
ings, and the floor, rotten with time, had failed 
under-foot, letting him slowly down through the 
crumbling tiles into the space below. 

“ Why, sir,” said Lepidus cheerfully, when at last 
we had him out and were dusting him over, “ ’tis 
said that we at Rome once had a gap in the Forum 
which might be filled by nothing less than a 
soldier in all his armour, but surely this is the first 
time in history that a yawning fissure was ever 
stopped by a saint and a cherry-tart ! ” 

“ He looked like a black demon in a pantomime,” 
observed Smythers, who was devoid of reverence, 
and owed the Churchman a grudge for many well- 
deserved rebukes — “ going down to Hades with 
something he had stolen.” 


180 LEPIDUS THE CENTURION 


“ And, oh ! to have had a photograph of him 
when he was half-sunk,” quoth another, “ with that 
dramatic agony on his face, and the pie-dish borne 
heroically aloft! All Pewchester would have gone 
mad over it. We would have had it in every shop- 
window round the Cathedral close, and built him a 
new portico out of the profits of the sale.” 

With incidents like this we “ beguiled the way,” 
until by the time the meal was over the hamper was 
very empty, and our men, if the truth must be told, 
very merry indeed. After we had cleared up with 
scrupulous neatness, for I cannot bear a litter or 
fragments left in a beautiful place, the Centurion 
drew me aside. 

“ Friend Louis,” he said, “ do you remember I 
told you how we had a Cupid on a column in the 
mid-court of this place, hard by the fountain basin 
in which your priest of Pewchester now washes up 
the spoons? Well, that Cupid stood just where they 
have left the bush upon the hummock, and I have a 
great liking to see if he is there still — ’twas that 
Cupid, you remember, in the shadow of whose bow 
I wooed Prisca the night the barbarians rushed us; 
and who knows,” he added smilingly, “ but that the 
little beggar may still have another shaft in his 
quiver to spend on us ! ” 

It was a very feasible idea; I myself wanted to 


LOVE, THE IMMORTAL 181 

see that stony little god that was so real to my mind's 
eye, and the workmen had left half a dozen spades 
in a far corner under a tarpaulin, so in a minute or 
two I collected the company, and after a brief lecture 
on Roman architecture, adroitly suggested that that 
interesting people were in the habit of adorning the 
inner court of their great houses with fountains and 
basins, such as we already saw before us, while in 
very many instances a statue of “ the tiny lord of 
love ” occupied that central position. “ My friend 
Lepidus here had suggested such might be the fact in 
the present case, and as the workmen had left the 
very spot untouched under yonder hawthorn which 
would represent the site of the possible Cupid, he 
called for spades and volunteers.” 

Smythers said my lecture was the most moving 
thing he had ever heard, while my mother observed 
that she had no idea I remembered so much of my 
school learning. 

In brief, we got to work on the mound — half a 
dozen of us — with the energy inspired by lunch, and 
it was a beautiful sight to see these unaccustomed 
navvies shovelling the light soil with might and 
main, while the Bishop and I wheeled the stuff in 
two barrows over to the escarpment. When we had 
been at work about a quarter of an hour, one shouted 
out he had found something, and all hurrying round 


182 lepidus the centurion 

to his side, there to our delight — I will not say sur- 
prise, for I at least was certain the find would be 
made — was the base of a small fluted column pro- 
jecting from the soil! We had it out — it was 
only about three feet long — in a couple of minutes, 
and under direction of Mullens in his professional 
capacity set it up firmly on end under the hawthorn 
boughs in the very socket it used to occupy in those 
days so immensely long ago. That fired our en- 
thusiasm, of course, and the diggers, crowding to 
the place where the column had been found, set to 
work with redoubled zeal to unearth “ the little beg- 
gar with the bow and arrow,” as perspiring Smyth- 
ers said. I, not to hamper my guests, withdrew to 
one side and shovelled away reflectively, Pris near 
by, working at the mound with a fern-gathering 
trowel and a curiously eager expression of face. 

Scooping the friable soil, mostly vegetable mould 
or fine silt washed from the adjoining hillside, away 
from the surface of the tessellated floor, and bringing 
it down by the spadeful from above, I presently 
struck upon something harder than the adjoining 
earth, and going upon one knee, uncovered a baby 
fist! It was the prettiest little fist imaginable of 
white marble, tight clenched upon what I saw at once 
was the centrepiece of a small bow, and, foolish as it 
was, a paternal thrill of interest in the buried urchin, 


LOVE, THE IMMORTAL 183 

who for certain owned those clenched fingers, passed 
through me. As for Pris, she saw me stop work, 
sailed to my side, and instantly seeing the prize, with 
a suppressed cry of feminine pleasure, went down 
on both knees and kissed that chubby fist again and 
again. 

“ Quick ! ” she said, with her fair cheeks aglow, 
“ dig — get it out ; oh, the pity that the little love has 
lain in the dark so long ! ” 

Between the spade and fern trowel we quickly 
bared the mischief-maker, and just as the others dis- 
covered the object of our frantic labour he rolled 
out of his darksome cradle into Priscilla’s arms. She 
was so delighted she could scarcely even show him 
to the guests. Whether it was all maternal in- 
stinct, or some reminiscence of the old passion of 
which he had been witness I know not, but there is 
the fact : she held that stony babe, with the akimbo 
arms and dimpled cheeks, to her bosom — most dan- 
gerous place ! — as though he were her own offspring. 

Then when the wonder subsided we took the in- 
fant to the grassy basin hard by, and Pris washed 
him clean; removed the dirt of centuries from his 
crevices with a pickle-fork, and anointed him with 
tenderness and smiles. She dried him on two table- 
napkins, and there he was as complete and dimpled a 
little god as one could wish for. It is true a toe 


1 84 LEPIDUS THE CENTURION 


had gone, his wings were missing, and there was no 
bow in those strong small hands, but their attitude 
implied it to all beholders, and we, hoisting him to 
his ancient pedestal where he was soon triumphantly 
poised against the shadow of the hawthorn bush, 
stood round adoring in diverse fashions. 

Everyone is in love, or has been, or hopes to be. 
I think the force of that great truth was borne in 
upon us as we stood there, actually silent for a mo- 
ment, round the shrine of the strangely recovered 
god, and felt his mesmeric influence stir within us 
those pulses at once so sweet and so vague. 

Miss Smith — charming priestess for such a shrine 
— protected the Lord of Love, not allowing Smythers 
to outrage him with his wit, and when we had adored 
enough we broke up into small groups and separated, 
each to our several enjoyments. 

Some went to sketch upon the sunny hillside; 
some to fish down by the brook where the trout were 
scattered, but of fair size, in the holes under the 
alders; some to flirt; and the Bishop, with his lady 
and my parent, went off to visit a neighbouring 
moor-man’s wife. At tea-time we all met again to 
boil kettles and brew tea, and so the pleasant day 
wore to an end. Just as the sun was getting low, 
and rabbits were cautiously beginning to appear from 
their burrows in the hedge banks, while that fine 


LOVE, THE IMMORTAL 


185 


scent which comes with the evening- was rising from 
the coppices, the carriage was announced to be in the 
roadway beyond the brow, and my mother, having 
taken an impromptu roll-call, found we were all pres- 
ent save Lepidus and Miss Smith. The fact of their 
absence had not impressed itself on me before; I 
had been so busy playing host and discussing knotty 
points of Roman architecture with the Bishop, who 
entertained some opinions on the subject I could not 
and would not assent to. The knowledge that they 
were not amongst us had presented itself in a vague 
way to my eyes, but I presumed the two were close 
by somewhere amongst the ruins, or picking black- 
berries just over the slope, and it was impossible 
for me to play nursemaid to them all day. Now the 
fact was not to be blinked, and an awkward silence 
fell upon the waiting group. Mullens had seen them 
higher up the river an hour ago deep in conversation, 
and Mrs. Milward had watched them as they sat on 
a moss-covered boulder, “ looking, oh, so happy ! ” 
as she said with pretty malice, and these items of in- 
formation having been elicited, silence again came 
upon us who stood waiting to go home. Finally my 
mother, turning to me with vexation in her kindly 
face, said: 

“ Louis, go and find these truants and tell them — 
or tell Miss Smith, at least — she must come at once; 


1 86 LEPIDUS THE CENTURION 


we are waiting. We will go to the carriage and 
stay there till you return.” 

There was something in my parent’s tone not to be 
gainsaid, so while she led off her party up the grassy 
slope to where the moorland road lay just out of 
sight beyond, I turned my back upon the now de- 
serted villa, its little picnic fires still sending up 
spirals of thin smoke into the quiet evening air, its 
strange yet familiar surroundings, and went down 
to the stream, meaning to follow it up until I came 
sooner or later upon those two wanderers. Before 
I had gone half a mile up the bubbling course Lepi- 
dus and Pris appeared on the moorland slope high 
above me, going back most leisurely towards the pic- 
nic place by a hillside path. So up I went, expecting 
to overtake them before they joined the others, but 
an impassible bit of boggy ground across my way 
put me off the direct line, and by the time their 
track was reached the truants were out of sight. 

What a lovely evening it was ! As I stopped after 
the climb to take breath and glance round, the sun 
was just going down behind the heather which burnt 
in his setting as though it were on fire. All away 
between that glow and me the pennons of the cotton 
grass on every hummock ridge shook in the light 
breeze like angry flags, and the steel-white bents 


LOVE, THE IMMORTAL 


187 


wavered and flashed in the twilight till you could 
almost think that they were the glittering spears of 
a great army pouring through those fen-ways. And 
over them the fiery sky flushed and every cloud in the 
west gleamed as though it floated over an open fur- 
nace door. It was exactly such an evening as the 
Roman had described to me as that one on which the 
villa was burnt, and with the remembrance of his 
words in my mind I turned to the opposite side of the 
valley. 

All that fair slope was lit up again, just as he had 
said; the copper glow was climbing amongst the 
tree-stems and plating with gold the upland leas 
there lying molten under a sky of deep untroubled 
blue, spotless and serene. The very shepherd, such 
as Lepidus had told me of, was coming, huge-seem- 
ing of stature, over the brow, “ driving a golden 
Jason flock ” before him by twenty grassy bye- ways 
into the valley, as he had done a thousand years ago ! 
The river was saying the very same things; the 
very silence was the same as that I had felt when he 
told me how, on that evening long ago, he had 
wooed the girl he and I both loved; and that like- 
ness, that ghostly repetition of time frightened me; 
it was as though I had been swept sheer out of my 
being into the void of unknown centuries, and, like 


1 88 LEPIDUS THE CENTURION 


a dog who hears in the darkness the soft feet of the 
dead passing to and fro, I turned from the splendid 
brightness of that haunted valley and slunk away. 

A few hundred yards along the track led me into 
the thicket above the villa, while another hundred 
paces along the winding mossy path, already moist 
with dew, brought me to the very threshold of that 
forgotten mansion. Passing round where the gran- 
aries had been, and between rows of broken pillars 
still red in the western glow, I came suddenly upon 
the courtyard in the centre with its shadowy haw- 
thorns, its broken fountain basin, and that laughing, 
leer-eyed boy we had set up on its pedestal again 
after endless years of darkness! 

And by that Cupid, in the hush of the twilight and 
shadows, with the ruddy gleams dying out about 
them as they stood, were the Roman and the girl he 
had wooed exactly as they had been once before ! I 
was rooted to the ground, and could but watch in 
silent horror what followed. Speaking eagerly into 
her ear at first, he soon pressed nearer and nearer 
until his arm was about her waist, and her hands in 
his. Even from where I stood I could see the heave 
of her bosom, and the colour that came and went in 
swift transitions over her face. It seemed to me she 
was in the throes of a struggle such as one may feel 
but seldom in a lifetime, and while half her nature 


LOVE, THE IMMORTAL 


189 


was struggling for freedom, the other half was sink- 
ing under some strange, irresistible compulsion of 
fate. Closer and closer he pressed, whispering what 
I could not hear, but could guess too well by his im- 
passioned face, while she struggled helplessly, tear- 
less and silent, now one mood getting the better, then 
the other, and all the time the Roman drew her in to 
him remorselessly, just as he had told me he had 
drawn her more than a thousand years ago, speaking 
to her in fiery earnestness; twice her head was half 
upon his shoulder, twice her hands half-way to his 
lips. A third time she tried to resist, a fierce desper- 
ate struggle for herself, and then it was as if her 
strength broke all on a sudden: the sweet brown 
head went down in helpless surrender upon the Ro- 
man shoulder, the soft hands submitted resistless to 
a rain of hot kisses, and when I heard him whisper 
to her, in tones of which no distance could deaden 
the triumph, she buried her face in his broad chest 
and, helpless as a babe, burst into a flood of tears. 

For my part I was absolutely and completely 
nerveless without volition or being, for those few 
moments, and now that I come to look upon it, I can 
but explain that astounding negation by the supposi- 
tion that the Centurion in that moment of keen ex- 
citement was drawing so largely on the fund of life 
I truly believe we shared in common, that he was 


LEPIDUS THE CENTURION 


190 

actually using my supply as well as his own, and 
leaving me for the time void and helpless. Be this 
as it may, there I stood dazed, my eyes fixed on the 
ground, and when I looked up with sudden furious 
energy it was too late, the two had gone on silently 
up the path, and had already been met by one of the 
people from the carriage. 

So I followed them in a very medley of strange 
sensations, half doubting whether what I had seen 
was real, and so numbed, when presently the rest of 
the party were rejoined, by the laughter and prosaic- 
ness of those about me, that I could not bring myself 
to say a word. 

Nothing occurred during the drive home ; indeed, 
my mind is a blank upon the subject — and that eve- 
ning we were all pinned down to separate tables for 
cards. When the cards were done, my mother took 
me into her boudoir to talk over some matters of the 
estate and accounts, into which I plunged with fever- 
ish eagerness — for in truth my head was in a whirl, 
my heart full of bitterness. So long we stopped 
over those knotty questions, ranging from high dis- 
putes with neighbouring lords of manors to discus- 
sions as to whether the second stable-boy was entitled 
to charge us for two dozen new spotted cravats per 
month, and, if he was, whether he could possibly 
wear them out in the time, that the guests, tired with 


LOVE, THE IMMORTAL 


191 

the day’s fresh air, sent in a deputy to say they were 
on their way to bed — and their deputy was Priscilla ! 

She came in like a soft cloud of whiteness, bring- 
ing the faintest, finest odour of her favourite scent 
with her, and the whole room seemed to light up with 
her gracious presence. She went over to my mother, 
and, delivering her message, put a soft arm about her 
neck, and in the prettiest way stroked the grey hair 
from her forehead, while with the familiarity of a 
daughter she gently upbraided her for working so 
late. Then over to me, flushed and miserable, nurs- 
ing my anger with the horrible remembrance of 
what I had seen back at the villa, she came and 
lightly setting her beautiful hand upon my shoulder, 
stood so by me for a minute. That touch thrilled 
me through and through; it was like a blessed opiate 
to my high-strung nerves; it was mesmeric in its 
sweet sedate confidence; I felt its strong virtue in 
my innermost fibre; it was like the touch of the 
white-robed vestal giving life and honour back to the 
wretch on his way to torture, and with a gasp of con- 
tending emotions I looked up at her. Never, I think, 
in her life, had she appeared so sweet, so immaculate, 
so absolutely certain of her unruffled womanhood; 
and yet, and yet, I had not been dreaming away there 
by the picnic place! This same girl, who had that 
very morning chosen the day when she should be my 


192 


LEPIDUS THE CENTURION 


wife, was the same who a few hours later stood in 
the dusk locked in the arms of a stranger, crying her 
eyes out, and suffering him unresistingly to kiss 
again and again that very hand she was now giving 
to me. Was it possible, after all, I had imagined the 
whole thing — but no! I knew I had not imagined 
it. Was it possible she had completely forgotten it? 
was it possible she remembered, and was a wanton, 
cruel, heartless, and unblushing? 

I hated myself for the mere supposition; she was 
the mirror of goodness there as she stood before me ; 
the epitome of sweet and tender womanhood ; some- 
thing was amiss, but it was not she, and my love 
came back with a rush upon me as she bade me good- 
night, and allowed me to lift her fingers reverently 
to my lips. 

Then we settled down to accounts again, and my 
parent, who was admirably frugal even in matters 
of detail, asked me seriously whether I thought it 
was worth while growing potatoes for the household 
ourselves when they could be bought anywhere for 
three-halfpence a pound wholesale? She pointed out 
the amount of ground they took up in the kitchen 
garden, their cost in labour and manure, and asked 
whether it was justified. I abandoned the potatoes 
without a murmur, and my mother at once wrote out 
a ukase for the head gardener expressing our de- 


LOVE, THE IMMORTAL 


i93 


cision. The mention of that excellent person re- 
minded her that he wanted a hundred yards of piping 
laid down from the well in the back-yard to the 
melon-house. “ Didn’t I think a new water barrow 
would serve just as well, and be much cheaper? ” I 
was of course strongly in favour of the water bar- 
row. 

“ Besides,” said the dear old lady, “ if we had the 
pipes laid, that young man Andrews would always 
be in the yard pumping, and the girls would be out 
helping, or staring at him when they ought to be in 
the laundry.” I agreed, with a sweet figure in white 
still in my eyes, that financially, socially and morally 
it was essential to suppress the insidious pipe scheme; 
and so my mother went on for another hour or 
more. 

It was quite late when we had done at last; the 
house had been shut up, and all others long retired 
to rest. My mother, with a sigh of relief, set to 
work putting out the lights, and as she had a fancy 
for keeping some of her more important account- 
books in a strong box in her own room, asked if I 
would carry the goodly pile up there. So, candle in 
one hand and books in the other, I led the way a little 
in advance, sleepy, but happy in a renewed confi- 
dence in Pris. Her bedroom, No. 16 it was, lay on 
the way to my mother’s, and I should pass that magic 


i 9 4 


LEPIDUS THE CENTURION 


portal I knew the number beyond all mistake — 
had I not passed it once or twice since she came to 
stay with us, and once even seen that sweet, tall lady 
on the threshold, speaking to an attendant housemaid 
while from within, over her shoulder, as I passed 
came a glimmer of mystic bed-hangings, flower- 
decked toilet-table, and all those dainty trappings of 
the female room that are so awesome to the bachelor ? 
No. 16! there was no forgetting that ambient num- 
ber, and there it was, half-way down the dim cor- 
ridor. 

No. 13 I passed, where blithe Mrs. Milward 
lay, doubtless dreaming of some one toiling on 
dusty Indian plains for her; 14, the Bishop’s lady’s 
tiring room; 15, sacred to my cousin Alice — 
and may heaven forgive me for the presumption, 
but I could almost see my dainty little kinswoman 
within, curled up in her snowy nest, as surely as 
I could see her shoes put out for cleaning on the 
mat; 16 — here it was, the room of rooms, the inner- 
most sanctity of them all to me — why! what was 
this? I staggered back against the wall, nearly let- 
ting the candle drop in sheer amazement, for there 
upon the mat before that doorway were two pairs 
of boots, a man’s heavy foot-gear, soiled with a day’s 
tramping, and a woman’s ! 

I stared and stared again : was I mad or dreaming ? 


LOVE, THE IMMORTAL 


i95 


What extraordinary mistake was I making? There 
was no mistake; it was No. 16 as plain as black and 
white porcelain could show, and the boots were real, 
— grimly, unblushingly real in their naked simplicity. 
I glared at them, while a score of strained excuses 
rushed upon my mind. Perhaps the boot-cleaners 
had made a mistake, but no — the boot-cleaners had 
not yet been round; perhaps some man had put his 
there in sleepy error ; but then no male guest slept in 

this corridor; perhaps, perhaps . My mind 

fairly tottered with amazement, while over it there 
swept for an instant all the doubt and mingling of the 
villa, the soldier’s burning words, my doubt, and 
confidence again. What did it mean ? — and then as 
I groaned, unable to move a pace from the spot, there 
came my mother’s step behind me. 

“ What is it?” she asked in a low voice so as 
not to disturb the sleepers within. But I could not 
answer or look up, I was too ashamed, only could 
I keep my eyes on those boots. And after a minute 
my mother perceived the direction of my gaze. I 
saw that gentle old lady start, staring at me in turn, 
and then to her comely old cheeks, to which mine 
in babyhood had been so often pressed, there rose 
a blush, a real blush, and — oh, a thousand shames 
on me for bringing it there! With her quick wit 
she had guessed my thoughts, and, coming close so 


196 LEPIDUS THE CENTURION 


that our shadows joined grotesque and gigantic on 
the ceiling, she said without anger in my ear : 

“ Louis, for shame! You are a boy, a very fool- 
ish and jealous one, not yet worthy of the love of a 
sweet woman, I fear. Yes, that is, or rather was, 
Miss Smith’s room. But she came to me after the 
picnic to-day, and asked — though why I know not 
— to change it for another next to mine, that one 
with the door opening between us. And this room. 
No. 1 6, I gave instead to Mr. and Mrs. Mullens, 
who also wished to change. There! are you sat- 
isfied now? Give me those books and go to your 
room at once, Louis — think what she would say, my 
dear boy, if she ever heard a whisper of this.” 

For a minute those kindly lips were pressed in 
gentle reproach to my forehead, and then I did as I 
was bid — ashamed of myself, but secretly joying for 
the moment in a new gratitude and trust in Priscilla. 


CHAPTER XIV 


THE HERO TURNS CYNIC 

T HERE were two or three rainy days after 
that, and the dampness entered into my 
soul, as it will into everyone’s at times. I 
sulked in my private smoking-room, knowing little 
of what the others did, or hung about the retired 
corners of the library, taking down only those vol- 
umes of which the repute indicated that they were 
likely to agree with my misanthropical state of mind. 
A book which is unsympathetic when your mood is 
pronounced is no good. There are some who believe 
that you can go to literature to be morally chastised, 
as a naughty little boy goes to his mother for the 
physical equivalent of that process. But in pain or 
pleasure give me the book that is like a gentle friend 
and will meet the waywardness of the moment half 
way, holding out, as it were, the arms of an under- 
standing compassion, weeping with my tears and 
laughing with my laughter — that is the true friend, 
whether in broad-cloth or gilded leather, whether on 
two legs or between two covers ; and amongst those 
1 97 


198 LEPIDUS THE CENTURION 


old shelves, so near to the top of the house that the 
noises of the frivolous world were deadened under 
foot, and only the contented chatter of young star- 
lings beneath the red tiles above broke the stillness, I 
had tier on tier of consolers. There I would muse 
how strange it was that the fountains of human sym- 
pathy should be sealed to most of us by a hundred 
adverse circumstances: that the friends who still 
were flesh, and talked with living tongues, should so 
often be worthless by reason of conventionality or 
passing moods, of distance or misunderstandings, 
while these dead ones, disembodied, purged of chance 
emotions, loosened from the petty considerations of 
life, should be always at hand, always equable, always 
as bountifully ready to give of their nature, good or 
bad, as wind and rain, or the blessed sunshine itself. 
Perhaps the human dead are like them, and the trou- 
bled soul in another sphere may wander through the 
great libraries of the spirit world, getting from a 
thousand great essences that which it asks for in- 
stantly, and bettering or hampering itself by their 
consolation just as the living human mind does from 
its books according to the advisers whose aid it asks ? 

Personally I made a poor use of this philosophy, 
and spent those wet afternoons in the ungodly com- 
pany of all the dusty old tomes who harmonised most 
with my ill humour, more especially with those who 


THE HERO TURNS CYNIC 


199 


laid themselves out in denunciations of that sex to 
whom, since the world began, has been given the dual 
powers at once to hurt and comfort mankind the 
most. And alone with them in the retired alcoves, 
I, the latest of angry lovers, fed my fires with the 
cold ashes of their long dead disappointments. I 
read and read until the loveliness that is in woman 
became in my mind the very livery of sin itself, and 
the gentleness that behoves them but the touch of the 
creeping serpent; and, as I joyed with those old fel- 
lows in their spleen, the scales fell from my eyes and 
I saw deep at last into the horrible wickedness of the 
sex; feeling a new strength arise thereby within 
me! No more would I be toyed with, it was beneath 
my manhood to fetch and carry, to hang on a breath 
of these tinselled dolls, these after-thoughts of cre- 
ative invention, inferior and incomplete. 

Never again, I swore on the third of those wet 
afternoons as I sat recluse in my library corner, 
never more would I be a slave, never again let my 
heart beat slow or fast to the measure any mincing 
jade should set it. I was free, the scales had fallen 
from my eyes, and rejoicing in my strength, like a 
young knight in his untried armour, I shut the covers 
of my favourite ancient cynic and, sliding him to the 
floor, fell into a reverie. 

Then it happened that, while brooding over the 


200 LEPIDUS THE CENTURION 


frailty of all women and the falsehood of those in 
particular with whom I had to associate, there came 
a gentle touch upon my shoulder, and starting up, 
there against my bench was the high culprit herself, 
the quaint essence of feminine frowardness, tall and 
graceful, and bending on me eyes of shameless in- 
terest. 

“ Mr. Allanby, ,, she began, “ I have come from 
your mother: she thinks you are reading too long, 
and stay too much indoors of late. She asked me 
to tell you the rain has stopped, and she wants you, 
if you will, to take me for a ride.” 

“I am sorry, but I don't care about going out 
to-day.” 

“ So I guessed,” answered the lady, ignoring my 
rudeness, “ and it was just for that reason I came 
up — alone — to persuade you. Please do come, your 
mother really wishes it, and I shall not go with- 
out you; it will give me real pleasure if you will 
come.” 

“ And you think, I suppose, that that is conclu- 
sive? ” 

“ It would have had weight with you once, Louis,” 
answered the girl gently, and looking up I saw the 
beginning of a tear in those eyes that I used to think 
so kind. What was I to do? She was as beautiful 
as a flower, standing there against the dim backing 


THE HERO TURNS CYNIC 


201 


of the dusty shelves, and all my resolution ran to 
waste as I looked upon her. What an infernal shame 
that so much wickedness could look so lovely — could 
be armed at every point for the subjection of re- 
sistance? Fair hair, a little loose, and touched by a 
streak of sunshine; soft cheeks upon which the 
treacherous colour came and went; sweet mouth 
backed by speaking limpid eyes that illuminated 
every utterance of her mind with tender radiance — 
now was the time for that crabbed fellow on the floor 
to stand by me, in the hour of trial; but, coward 
like, he made no sign, lying flat upon his face and 
looking — oh, so ragged and tawdry beside her loveli- 
ness. 

Thus it came about that, deserted by my allies, 
I had to let Pris sit down on the bench beside 
me, and take my hand in friendly fashion, and 
absent-mindedly mistaking my philosopher for a 
footstool put her foot upon him, and woo me back to 
slavery. I felt the chains closing, and had no heart 
to shirk them; I felt my fair captor rivet the links 
with her dulcet voice, and I submitted. All my 
philosophy went at the touch of that sweet Circe. 
She was so eager to win me again, that by accident 
or art her very reserve was forgotten for the mo- 
ment. Nearer and nearer she came; we were all 
alone, even the starlings’ chatter was hushed — nearer 


202 LEPIDUS THE CENTURION 


and nearer, till her piled hair at my shoulder shone 
in the rays like golden wire, and her pleasant breath 
was upon me; nearer and nearer, wooing me with 
those velvet touches of her fingers, speaking to me 
with a voice like the wind in the meadow grass, so 
near came that sweet aggressor, inviting capture, 
that the glamour of her presence thrilled me to my 
sluggish core. Three times I shook my head, and 
put her back, three times looked for counsel and en- 
couragement to those glum cynics on the shelves, 
and then, forgetting everything but the fascination 
of the moment, threw my arms about the sweet de- 
ceiver, and drawing her struggling into my breast, 
gave her the kiss of fealty — not one, alas ! but many, 
and so went back to slavery. 

“ Well, dear,” said my mother's voice, as we came 
down the winding library stairs, “ have you brought 
him?” 

“ Yes, Mrs. Allanby, he is here behind me,” an- 
swered Miss Smith, with modesty becoming a 
worthy conqueror, and forthwith I was “ produced,” 
as lawyers say, the guests about my parent staring 
at me, who had been so long in hiding, as though I 
were a piece of treasure trove, or a small boy caught 
in trying to make a burglarious entry through an 
upper window. “ I have told him we are going out 
riding, and he has very kindly offered to join us ” 


THE HERO TURNS CYNIC 


203 


(this, by the way, was the first intimation that Miss 
Smith and I were not going alone), and turning to 
me before I could express my surprise, she went on : 
“ The horses will be ready in five minutes, Mr. Al- 
lanby, and your dear mother, who loves horses only 
less than children, cannot bear to see them wait — will 
five minutes be enough for you to get ready in ? ” 

I bowed : having so newly surrendered at discre- 
tion it did not beseem me to question a first com- 
mand, and I went off to my room for a warmer riding 
coat, trying to comfort myself with the reflection 
that if company had been foisted on us, at least Pris 
had shown a proper spirit in making me one of the 
party. Probably the other riders were one of our 
Oxford undergraduates, who rode a horse like a 
sailor ashore, and Miss Alice, who was very nervous 
in the saddle, or pretended to be when there was an 
eligible gentleman at hand. Why ! it would be actu- 
ally promoting my mother’s matrimonial schemes to- 
wards those two empty-headed triflers if I could man- 
age to separate the party — an absolute act of virtue 
to “ get lost ” and come home in detachments; how 
we would laugh over it to-morrow morning at break- 
fast, I thought, as I buckled on my spurs, and fas- 
tened my cravat down securely at the back. And 
we did have that laugh the next morning at break- 
fast, but not quite as I had arranged. 


204 LEPIDUS THE CENTURION 


These thoughts put me into a cheerful frame of 
mind. Judge then of my chagrin when, coming up 
to the group in the hall porch, a glance served to 
show that besides Miss Smith, the only other person 
dressed for the ride was Lepidus the Roman himself. 
I was so taken aback that for a moment I hesitated ; 
surprise, anger, and a half inclination in my mind 
to throw my whip into the fireplace even then, and 
return forthwith to my sulks. “ You fool! ” I said 
to myself bitterly, “ after stuffing yourself with all 
that philosophy upstairs, and swaggering your new- 
got caution, to swallow the first bait a woman 
dangles over you, climbing down from your pedestal 
at a touch of her finger to be a laughing-stock to 
everyone. You a man of discretion, you an im- 
provement on your sex — why no schoolboy enam- 
oured of the mature damsel behind his sweet-stuff 
counter could be a more silly calf ! There, go ! they 
have done laughing at you for the moment ; go and 
stuff yourself with more philosophy till you are 
wanted again.” Though I told myself I deserved all 
that, yet I could scarcely turn back having gone so 
far ; that would be too peevish, too like the foresaid 
schoolboy, and while I weighed the matter Pris 
espied me. “ Oh, there you are,” she cried, coming 
through the crowd, “ and ready — how good of you ! 


THE HERO TURNS CYNIC 205 

Here is Mr. Lepidus ready too, so we can start at 
once — I told you he was coming, did I not ? ” 

“ I think you overlooked the fact/’ this in my 
gloomiest tone. 

“ Oh, how stupid of me ! ” exclaimed Miss Smith, 
dropping a beautiful hand for a moment on my arm, 
and giving a look of bewitching plausibility; “ but 
you know he wanted to take me out, and I would 
not hear of it, unless you came too. And there is 
another surprise for you — your friend is going to 
ride ‘ Satan.' ” 

“ I am glad," I blurted out, the unholy thought 
springing to my mind that perhaps “ Satan ” would 
break the Roman neck. Whether Miss Smith under- 
stood, or not, is impossible to say. She led me out 
into the porch, where I and Lepidus nodded briefly 
to one another, and there, sure enough, was the big 
black horse for whom the Centurion had taken a 
great fancy and had ridden once or twice of late, 
champing his bit and pawing the gravel in the ex- 
uberance of his spirits. For Pris they had saddled 
a strong Irish mare, a handsome beast of good 
points and vast endurance, but uncertain temper, 
while my saddle was on an ordinary hunter, an 
amiable steed, good enough as a second mount in 
an easy country, but of no character. 


206 


LEPIDUS THE CENTURION 


Well, Miss Smith was hoisted up by a groom 
(for she would not show any partiality to either of 
us in this matter), the Roman, scorning stirrups, 
swung himself straight on to “ Satan’s ” back, amid 
the undivided admiration of the spectators, and when 
I had clambered to my hack (clumsily dropping my 
whip in the process) we waved adieu, and trotted off 
down the drive and towards the open country. 

It appeared that it was Miss Smith’s intention to 
go for a ride on the moorland, though the weather 
suggested one by preference nearer home, where shel- 
ter was to be obtained at need. But neither I nor the 
equinoxes were consulted in the matter, and to the 
heather we took our way, emerging after a time 
from the park on to the black uplands, flecked as far 
as the eye could see with the pools left by yesterday’s 
rain, and a dull sky overhead that seemed to be al- 
ready repenting of the sunshine of an hour ago, and 
quickly closing up its watery gleams with banks of 
leaden clouds that curdled as they met and twined 
in serpentine wreaths about the low vault of the 
heavens, like smoke from giant furnaces. 

As soon as she felt the springing turf under foot, 
Miss Smith made an end of the desultory conversa- 
tion we had been maintaining, by giving her reins 
a shake and starting the mare off on one of those 


THE HERO TURNS CYNIC 207 

long wolf-like gallops at which your Irish horse is 
hard to beat. 

I confess there was an extraordinary exhilaration 
in the wild free air of those uncovenanted pastures 
that stretched away from our snug valley, ridge 
beyond ridge to the very sea itself. It fired our 
horses’ blood like our own, and we went pounding 
away mile after mile over the springy ground, little 
noting how dark the sky was growing overhead. 
The shaggy red cattle gathering in knots behind the 
grey stone escarpments stared at us in wonder; the 
curlews rose from the steely pools, and circled over- 
head, uttering plaintive cries full of the loneliness of 
untenanted spaces — but never a human being did we 
see in all those miles. At last we had gone so far 
that even Pris pulled up, with a splendid colour in 
her face, and after a moment to recover breath, asked 
with a glance around what we thought of the 
weather, and how far we were from home? As it 

S 

chanced, we had come into a part of the fen coun- 
try that was not very familiar to me, so I could only 
reply that we were probably ten or twenty miles from 
shelter; and as for the sky, it was black enough to 
make a water rat turn home for his mackintosh. 

Nothing, however, would do but Miss Smith must 
go back by a new road. “ A short cut, kind Mr. Al- 


208 lepidus the centurion 


lanby,” quoth the beautiful girl, checking her fret- 
ting steed, and brushing back with the other hand 
those rebellious strands of hair the wind was blow- 
ing about her face; “ you know one, I am sure, across 
the stream; and if we get a sprinkling of rain on the 
way home, it is not I that will mind.” 

If she did not shrink from a wet jacket, how could 
we? So I answered that there was a possible ford 
a little higher up the swollen river on our left, and 
to it at her eager request I proceeded to lead them. 

This mountain torrent was a continuation of the 
one which ran through our valley, but between that 
distant spot and here it had received on its way to 
the sea numberless additions, and with them had be- 
come an angry stream, tossing its dishevelled locks 
as it ran over a stony bed under the black canopy 
of the sky in an extremely formidable way. We 
turned down its course for the ford I knew of, while 
the thunder rumbled overhead, and the wail of the 
curlews sweeping away down the wind sounded like 
the voices of disembodied spirits; and as we went, 
I told my companions a curious story of the lonely 
spot we were coming to. 

It was a darksome place amongst scattered grey 
rocks, hoary with lichens and ancient fir trees, and 
marked even to this day by the vestiges of a dwelling 


THE HERO TURNS CYNIC 


209 


place, half hollow mound, half stone-built cell, and 
there long ago a very holy man had dwelt. He had 
consecrated to Heaven the affections which some 
wayward damsel had rejected, and though he was 
civil enough to benighted travellers of his own sex, 
or wandering shepherds searching for lost lambs, the 
mere supposition of a female presence put him in 
an ungodly temper. Now one wild afternoon just 
like this, with the sky inky overhead, the pine 
branches tossing together in the gathering gloom of 
the wood, and the yellow flood at the hermit’s 
door, lamenting in a hundred melancholy strains 
as it hurried away into the mist-shrouded hollows 
of the hills, temptation in the form of a charming 
little lady came to that good man. He was cooking 
his evening meal in the shelter of the mossy stone 
outside his doorway; the water was just boiling, the 
humble pottage ready for the saint’s wooden basin, 
when the gusty wind blew the smoke into his face. 
He coughed and sneezed, as even hermits must under 
such circumstances, rubbed his eyes, and when he 
looked up again, there before him was that dainty 
lady — oh, such a woeful figure, all in a ragged green 
kirtle, muddy and travel stained, her poor feet bare 
and bruised with hard walking, her fair hands torn 
by brambles and sharp rocks, the strands of her 


210 


LEPIDUS THE CENTURION 


pretty hair blowing about her tired face, and such 
a look of pathos and entreaty about those wild blue 
eyes, and that tender baby-mouth ! 

If the saint had been wise he would have left his 
supper to take care of itself, and fled to the shelter 
of his cell before the charmer could say a word. 
But he was not wise, he listened, and was lost! It 
was only a little thing that hunted lady wanted — 
only to be carried across the ford before the night 
came down, and the hermit knew every foot of the 
way, he was a strong, big man, and she the lightest, 
slimmest little shape that had ever worn a woman’s 
form. Far be it from me to say what arguments she 
used, what deadly persuasion sapped the saintly reso- 
lution, but the fact remains, the hermit consented at 
last to break his rule, and taking the damsel in those 
arms, where never damsel had been before, essayed 
to carry her to the further bank. And black as mid- 
night grew the heavens as they went down to the 
flood, and strange unearthly voices howled amongst 
the tossing branches overhead ! Like hungry serpents 
the angry waves presently curled round the hermit’s 
knees, and that fairy form that had been so light 
before, seemed to turn to lead as he advanced. To 
thigh and waist and shoulder the torrent mounted, 
and then, alas! for faltering saintship, white as a 
dead man’s grew the fairy’s face — for it was a 


THE HERO TURNS CYNIC 


211 


wicked water sprite, of course, and not a mortal 
woman after all — her yellow hair blew away like 
the dun spume from the ridges of the foam-laced 
flood; those dimpled arms about his neck turned to 
grisly bone, the rose-bud fingers closed like iron 
fangs upon the shrieking hermit’s throat, and down 
she bore him, gasping and crying, into the black tide, 
down into that icy, eddying torrent, down for ever 
into the horrible black oblivion of the hurrying water 
— and then the night drew its curtains about the bed 
that wicked lady had made for herself and the 
hermit ! 

Lepidus, who was in a cheerful mood, laughed at 
my story, and said in substance that nothing in the 
hermit’s life became him like the leaving of it, but 
Miss Smith, with all a true woman’s unconquerable 
belief in the supernatural, took it seriously, and when 
we presently came to the gloomy hollow in ques- 
tion, where the shepherds said the anchoretic spirit 
still waited in stormy weather to show the ford to 
tired travellers, she was obviously more interested in 
the remains of what had once been his, than in 
our passage home. The Roman and I went down 
to the stream to seek for a turf bridge, which a 
farmer had built the previous summer, the rain beat- 
ing in our faces, and the thunder growling overhead, 
while Pris rode on a hundred yards to look at the 


2i2 LEPIDUS THE CENTURION 


ruined cell. Now I do not know why it was, but 
our horses were extraordinarily nervous. It may 
have been but the coming storm, or it may have been 
because animals know more of those who dwell in 
haunted spots than we, but there was the fact; all 
three whinnied with displeasure as we went into the 
dip, the Irish mare shook her fiddle-shaped head and 
glanced anxiously from side to side, my palfrey 
trembled with well-bred reserve, like the decorous 
park hack he was, while the Centurion’s black 
charger tossed his mane in fear and pawed the 
ground angrily as we came to the river edge. 

Lepidus was just saying to me, as he eyed the tor- 
rent, “ Mighty little can I see of your bridge here 
to-night, cousin, and if it were not for the lady, one 
place would serve as well to swim as any other,” and 
I was answering that “ it was for the lady, and the 
ford must be found by hook or crook,” when we 
heard Miss Smith scream, and turning our eyes we 
saw the Irish horse a short distance off, rearing up 
on its hind legs in front of the hermit’s ruined door- 
way, terror in its very outline. The next instant, 
sheer overhead came a keen blue flash of lightning 
and directly after a peal of thunder that seemed to 
rend the sky itself. Down went the sorrel mare at 
that sound, she spun right round in a way that must 
have unhorsed any rider less ready than the one upon 


THE HERO TURNS CYNIC 


213 


her, and in a thought had taken the bit into her teeth, 
and was bolting headlong from us towards the open 
ground and hills beyond. What she had seen in the 
hollow of the ruined cell we never knew, but her 
rider told us long afterwards that something there 
certainly was inside, something grey and shadowy 
— a sheltering hill sheep, perhaps — but whatever it 
was it had scared the horse horribly. 

Then began a chase never to be forgotten. I had 
slightly the vantage in position over the Roman, and 
with a shout started off in pursuit of the fugitive. 
But the scion of an illustrious race was only a few 
yards behind, and infinitely better mounted. When 
he saw what had happened, like the hero of Macau- 
lay's ballad — 

“—Never a word he spake. 

He clapt his hands on Auster’s mane, 

He gave the reins a shake, 

Away, away went Auster, 

Like an arrow from the bow ; 

Black Auster was the fleetest steed 
From Aufidus to Po ! ” 

Up the slope I led, my steed rending the tangles 
of moisture-laden sedge at every stride, and on the 
top we viewed her — saw her whom we both valued 
above all things, on fifty pounds' worth of accursed 
horseflesh, flying headlong into the grey mist of the 


214 LEPIDUS THE CENTURION 


next “ bottom,” — saw the black arms of the storm 
taking her in, and clapped our spurs into our horses’ 
sides. And all down the next moorland slope, 
dotted with grey rock and heather clumps, we raced 
madly; we burst girth-deep through a brook at the 
hollow, and with a shout set our horses to the fol- 
lowing rise. It was there that “ Satan ” came thun- 
dering by on my right hand, his hoofs spurting the 
bog-water to right and left, mane flying, and eyes 
as eager on the chase, I thought, as those of him who 
rode him — brave rider on brave steed. In vain I 
pressed the poor panting beast beneath me and in- 
wardly cursed my luck; it was like chasing one of 
the storm clouds overhead struggling after those 
two, and Lepidus laughed as he saw my futile ef- 
forts. “ Stir him up, cousin ! put your heels into 
him ; clear is the course, and fair is the prize. What ! 
done, is he? Well, good-bye, then, and trust me, 
but I will take good care of the lady till we come 
again; ” and stooping low, he slapped a hand anew 
upon Satan’s great neck, and shot away as though 
I were no better than rooted to the ground. 

All up the next rise I flogged my wretched hack, 
jealousy and anger raging in my heart. I gained 
the top just in time to see Pris, half a mile ahead, 
wave her gloved hand, half in entreaty, half in en- 
couragement, as the brute she rode swept her into the 


THE HERO TURNS CYNIC 


215 


heavy mists of the further valley, saw those shadows 
swallow her as if she had ridden though the portals 
of another world, heard the Centurion’s answering 
shout of courage as he gained on her at every stride, 
saw those shadows engulf him in turn, and then the 
heaving thing I bestrode caught a front leg in a 
rabbit burrow and rolled heavily, stupidly over with 
me! 

When I rose, dazed, to my feet and assured 
myself no bones were broken, a glance showed that 
save the disabled horse and myself there was not 
another living thing in sight. Miss Smith and the 
Roman had disappeared into the mists, and all around 
was a melancholy waste of moorland stretching for 
miles on every hand only relieved here and there by 
lagoons of mist in the hollows or occasional hillocks 
of rising ground crowned by rocks or dreary tangles 
of heather or bog myrtle. One of these, about a 
quarter of a mile away I recognised directly by the 
castle-like shape of its crags as a knoll called the 
Goblin’s Den, and it settled my first instinctive in- 
quiry, “ Where was I ? ” with the chilling informa- 
ton that home lay a long twenty miles away over the 
darkening wastes, and the nearest village of any kind, 
five miles in another direction. 

But it did not say where the truants were, and 
very bitterly I stared into the shadows, listening and 


2x6 LEPIDUS THE CENTURION 


watching in vain for a sign of their returning. Then, 
in a pause of the wild rain, I lifted my voice and 
cried out — 

“ Hullo there ! ” and to my surprise there came 
almost instantly the answer, “ Hullo there! ” Why, 
then, after all, they must be near, and greatly cheered 
I shouted again : “ Hullo ! ” and again that voice 
answered “ PIullo ! ” “ Lepidus,” I cried, “ where 

are you ? ” and over the wet rush flats and sighing 
ling there came the slow, melancholy response, “ Lep- 
idus, where are you ? ” Then I knew that it was 
but an echo that took up my cries — the goblin was 
mocking me out of his rocky castle, and half in vexa- 
tion, and half in anger, I laughed aloud, and in- 
stantly the goblin laughed with a hollow, joyless 
sound strangely weird in the gathering dusk of the 
twilight. 

It was no use standing fooling with that shadow, 
so, very cold and wet, I essayed to follow the trail 
of my companions, and I did follow it for a mile or 
so, until it eventually was utterly lost in the long 
heather of a dreary tract that led up into the heart 
of a pine forest on the hills beyond. 

What was I to do? The heroic course of con- 
duct, that which fire-side philosophers would cer- 
tainly expect of me, would be to scour the hillsides 
with unflagging energy until success at last crowned 


THE HERO TURNS CYNIC 


217 


my efforts. But then these moralists never take such 
details as waning light and a crippled steed into 
account. If I stayed out here and beat the mosses 
to and fro like an owl looking for mice, I should cer- 
tainly be benighted and almost as certainly fail in 
my object. If they did not hear my shouting, and 
my throat was already like a nutmeg grater, there 
was not one chance in a thousand of lighting upon 
them in the mist and rain. They might, indeed, 
have already passed me on the way home, and then 
what an egregious fool I should be to go howling 
about these wildernesses half the night searching 
for a couple of runaways who were already put- 
ting on dry clothes by the cheerful fires at home. 
To stay here shouting myself hoarse was heroic folly, 
to slink away to shelter, while my promised lady 
was perhaps braving out the storm alone with a 
stranger was plain cow r ardice. Long I thought 
of it, wandering to and fro, and crying on them 
until the very sound of my own voice bored me in 
those unsympathetic solitudes, and then I decided 
to take the ignoble course, and get to shelter. 

So off I set westward, over the quaking grass 
and sludgy sheep tracks, dragging my limping horse 
behind, and shivering as every drop of cold water 
ran from my hat-brim down my neck. For guidance 
to the distant cluster of cottages, I had a familiar 


21 8 LEPIDUS THE CENTURION 


knoll far ahead, and at my watch chain a little com- 
pass — a gift of the gods to vagrant humanity, with- 
out which no man or woman should ever go out of 
sight of their cabbage-beds — and for comfort my 
own thoughts. What a fool I had been, I solilo- 
quised, as the water soaked through first one thin 
riding boot and then the other, and my clothes began 
to cling damp and clammy about me — what a fool 
to come down from the retreat of my snug library, 
and wise old friends at the beck of that dear be- 
trayer, whom in my heart I loved so greatly — what a 
fool to let her show me as her humble slave before 
her friends, to be taken a-riding, and then turned 
loose, to be presently made, no doubt, a laughing- 
stock to high and low! I cursed my folly, cursed 
Lepidus, cursed my floundering steed, cursed the 
weather, and the sodden bog that squeaked and 
bubbled under foot as I plodded miserable and 
shamefaced through the gathering evening. 

It was a long five-mile walk, and at times seemed 
as though it would never end; but slowly the fir- 
crowned hillock grew tall and dim over the moor- 
land track; like a well-known headland to a wave- 
tossed mariner it marked the way, and at last was 
rounded, and there below was harbourage. 

To say I was glad to see the village, inadequately 
expressed my feelings. It was a grey and watery 


THE HERO TURNS CYNIC 


219 


hamlet as I approached it in the last of the daylight, 
a poor row of humble cottages threaded on a very 
sodden bit of mountain road, but here was shelter 
at any rate, supper and a dry coat, which are cheer- 
ing things even to your despondent lover. Further, 
there was a tiny telegraph office I remembered with 
delight, where they varied the sale of bulls-eyes and 
bootlaces by the supervision of such of his Majesty’s 
mails as came into that region, and thence it would 
of course be possible for me to communicate with 
home, and discover if the truants had returned. 

On to the village I went, and up the one street 
splashed my way, envying the truly happy ducks 
who were in glorious enjoyment of the gutters, and 
noting the curious faces of the weather-bound folk 
who stared at me from their diamond-latticed win- 
dows, as the good people in the ark must have stared 
at the amphibious monsters who swam into their 
neighbourhood during those dull months of theirs. 
At the inn, of course, they knew me, and were aghast 
with amazement to see the young squire standing 
there in the middle of the sawdusted bar, dripping 
like a newly landed walrus, steaming like a geyser. 
The stout host nearly choked himself with surprise 
and the beer he was drinking at the moment of my 
entry, his housewife all but dropped the babe she 
had in one hand into the cauldron of hot soup she 


220 LEPIDUS THE CENTURION 


was stirring with the other; the half dozen rough 
shepherds drinking the trestles stared with open- 
mouthed wonder, the dogs set off a barking under 
the bench, and the cocks began crowing on the 
further rafters; the maid peeling potatoes, out of 
sight in the kitchen, cut herself and screamed, and 
never was heard such a pandemonium. 

But the moment their senses came back, their 
rough but kindly welcome was overwhelming. Those 
good, bronzed fellows from the hills, who still wore 
undressed sheepskins over their shoulders, as their 
ancestors had done for unnumbered generations, led 
my poor horse to the stables ; the host roared the yap- 
ping dogs to silence, and yelled quaint, peaty, north- 
country oaths at his noisy poultry; the injured dam- 
sel from behind, when the truth dawned upon her, 
rushed to kindle a fire in the little parlour beyond 
the homely bar; the mother scolded her indignant 
offspring into peacefulness, and seizing on me, took 
my wringing jacket from me as though it were the 
Cadmian shirt, and then, in the shelter of the parlour 
offed my sodden boots and socks. They lit me a fire 
in the one little guest-room looking out upon the 
street, they found me a mighty flannel shirt, designed 
for some giant shepherd boy, and a green coat, long 
tailed and brass buttoned, with a pair of the host’s 
own trousers, short in the leg and monstrous in the 


THE HERO TURNS CYNIC 


221 


waist. Thus equipped, my feet in carpet slippers so 
large I had to shuffle to keep them on, a hot glass of 
punch still tingling in my throat, and that aesthetic 
feeling which comes to the newly dried and warmed 
pervading my being, I presently found myself down- 
stairs again confronting the landlord. 

That worthy’s manners withstood even the shock 
of my appearance thus clad, and forthwith I put to 
him the question in my mind. Firstly, had any two 
such riders as I described passed through the glen 
since dusk, and secondly, was there to be had for love 
or money in all the place, any beast on four legs that 
would get me home that night ? Both questions were 
answered in the negative. Not one of all those keen 
hill-men who had come in from the moors an hour or 
two ago had seen a horse, man or woman ridden. It 
was not a sight to be seen every day in this wilder- 
ness, and they swore strange oaths that they would 
not be likely to have forgotten had such a thing 
chanced upon them. And to the second question the 
answer was equally certain ; the only horse in all the 
village was the landlord’s market pony, and he had 
done his twenty miles that day already — there was 
not another three miles’ trot in him before the morn- 
ing, though half the kingdom depended upon it. 
Thus there remained only one thing to be done. The 
village postoffice was still open ; at least I could ascer- 


222 


LEPIDUS THE CENTURION 


tain if the truants had got home; so on a fly-marked 
form which my host found for me between the 
leaves of some neglected blotting-pad I hastily scrib- 
bled out a message to my mother. 

“ All well, but have lost my companions. Have 
they returned? Answer paid.” 

It was brief and not romantic, yet how much it 
might mean! I sent the dispatch off to the little 
office down the street by a shepherd, and then fell 
a-ruminating while the landlord went back to his 
tap, and the wife came in to spread a frugal supper 
for me. 

All through that meal I wondered and speculated. 
Was I a coward to sit here in a comparative com- 
fort, eating and drinking, while the girl who was 
in truth so dear to me, whom it was the one ambi- 
tion of my barren life to have for wife, and later 
on, if it should please the gods, for the honoured 
mother of my children, was braving the storm out- 
side, alone with the man who loved her, as well per- 
haps as I, and whose very approach to her I had 
learnt these last few days to dread? Was she hurt? 
Had that cursed beast they had put her on broken 
her sweet neck and my heart at one and the same 
time? And if unhurt what had become of her? 

While I still shuffled up and down the little room 
in my uncouth garments, listening to the wild rain 


THE HERO TURNS CYNIC 


223 


outside, the answer came to my telegram. The yel- 
low cover was tear-stained with the storm, and I 
tore it open with feverish haste. It was from my 
mother, and ran as follows : — 

“ Nothing heard or seen of your companions. 
Please change your socks if they are damp.” 

“ There is no answer,” I said briefly to the wait- 
ing messenger, and then as the door closed, dropped 
into a chair. No ! there was no answer to that fatal 
little missive to-night — but there would be some an- 
swer to-morrow! What would it be? — good or 
bad ? I could not tell, but as the anxiety and shame 
welled again into my heart I crumpled the message 
up in my hands and stared into the fire. 

They were out for certain, out miles from home 
without a chance of rescue. What would they do? 
What should I do in the circumstances ? 

A thousand possibilities raced through my heated 
brain. At last, determined to think no more, I got 
up and stalked to and fro, until my nerves were some- 
what quieted, and near on midnight I was able to 
take my candle and get to bed. 


CHAPTER XV 


LEPIDUS PHILOSOPHISES 

D REAMING uncomfortable dreams, and 
starting up to imagine that the voice of the 
wind in the chimney stacks was full of 
horrible meanings, I spent a hectic night, and then, 
as so often happens, fell into a sleep of prosaic depth 
with the first streak of daylight. 

Happily, for my reputation, orders had been given 
overnight for an early breakfast — early even as 
these moor-folk fix that ceremony — and for the 
village pony to be ready saddled immediately after- 
wards, and thus it happened I was called with the 
sunlight. 

That summons interrupted me in the midst of a 
dream in which Priscilla, Lepidus, a funny old her- 
mit, and myself were trying to cook oatmeal por- 
ridge in an iron pot. The pot was in a shepherd’s 
hut, and the hermit fed the fire with tomes from my 
library at home. Lepidus, in trousers and vest, kept 
jumping hither and thither, and calling out that the 
cauldron would boil all right when the thunder 
224 


LEPIDUS PHILOSOPHISES 


225 


stopped; while Pris bent, spoon in hand, so eagerly 
over our meal, that presently her long loose hair fell 
into the liquid, and went twining round and round 
in ever winding circles, till the pot spread out into a 
black river pool, in my disordered imagination, and 
hair and water swelled and foamed into a snaky 
all-embracing flood; the shrieking hermit on the 
bank wrung his hands and cried “ Another, another 
traitress has come!” and. Pris in my arms (for I 
had plunged in to rescue her) weighed heavy as lead, 
as with straining eyes and trembling limbs I strug- 
gled towards the shore that went back, and ever 
back, as we neared it. Lepidus on that bank was 
just in the act of wringing the anchorite’s neck for 
calling Miss Smith a traitress, and I “ at sea ” was 
in the throes of drowning, when there came a respite 
in the shape of that knock at my door, and starting 
up with the suddenness of the sleeper awakened, I 
shook my wandering faculties together. 

A lovely morning after the rain confronted me. 
It is the happy privilege of nature to emerge from 
her stormy outbursts not red-eyed and sore-headed, 
like we poor mortals, but refreshed and invigorated 
beyond recognition. Never had the moorland 
looked so fair as it did that daylight from my lattice, 
ten thousand acres of undulating heather and bog, 
with the rain-pools glittering in every hollow, and 


226 


LEPIDUS THE CENTURION 


framed by the soft purple of the distant hills, while 
overhead the clouds were floating idly down a sap- 
phire sky as clear as though it had not been ruffled 
since the world began. When the great mother thus 
smiles we, her children, must laugh. I breakfasted 
and mounted the waiting pony afterwards with a 
certain amount of confidence in the outcome of the 
day. For one thing, I had got my own clothes 
again, and that was much, since no man can be at 
peace with Providence in another man’s trousers. 
Then again I had rested, and still again, my pony’s 
head was turned homeward, where news and the 
opportunity of action awaited me — both god-sent 
things in time of difficulty. 

So we jogged along pretty pleasantly, I the truant 
lover whistling at times to persuade myself that I 
believed all was well with Priscilla, until presently 
we mounted the last ridge and saw the dear, ever 
welcome roof amongst the trees below. I stripped 
my steed of saddle and bridle and turned him loose 
in the paddock by the park entrance to graze. Then, 
a few minutes after, with my hand on the shrubbery 
gate, stopped to collect my thoughts. What sort 
of welcome should I get — tragic or ludicrous ? 
What news awaited me — good heavens! what a 
wide gamut of possibilities there was between the 
light banter I might meet with, and the horrible 


LEPIDUS PHILOSOPHISES 


227 


silence of the other possibility! The doubt was in- 
tolerable, and pushing through the wicket I strode 
eagerly over the lawns, sprang up the grassy ter- 
race, and — I confess it — with my heart audibly beat- 
ing, burst into the hall. No ! there was no air of 
dramatic horror there, no funeral silence, no whis- 
pering groups ! Instead there was a distinct aroma 
of breakfast, and a cheerful-looking tray of used 
plates and empty eggshells, resting for a moment on 
its way to the kitchen, caught my eye by the morn- 
ing-room door. And through that portal came the 
sound of laughter that dissolved my last fears like 
summer mist. 

“ Poor wretch ! ” I heard Smythers say, “ it is a 
shabby trick you two played, and I pay him the 
tribute to think he is fool enough to have spent 
the whole of a miserable night looking for you both 
on the heather.” 

Then a voice, easily recognisable as the widow’s, 
remarked, “ No, Mr. Smythers; I think, in spite 
of appearances, Mr. Allanby can be quite sagacious 
at times. He is not so stupid as you think, and 
when he found, his — well, I will say his guest , Miss 
Smith, had gone for an evening ride with a friend 
he probably decided to leave them to their fate, and 
went in search of shelter.” 

“ I cannot agree with you, Mrs. Milward/’said the 


228 LEPIDUS THE CENTURION 


sculptor, from across the table, somewhat warmly; 
“ a man’s chivalry and sense of honour acknowledge 
no personal considerations whatever. Urged by 
either, he does the bare duty that lies before him, 
in this case to search for lost friends, with an abso- 
lute disregard of adverse critics or personal 
consequences.” 

“ A beautiful rule,” said the Bishop’s mellow 
voice, “ and befitting one who is accustomed to per- 
ceive the ideal ever rising triumphant through all 
the stress and labour of the moment.” 

“ I do not know,” I said, pushing open the door 
and stepping in amongst them without waiting to 
hear more, “ whether my opinions on these matters 
are of any interest, but at least I may say I am very 
glad to see Miss Smith has taken no harm from 
her ride, whatever my part in it.” 

There, indeed, was that lady in white muslin, 
seated contentedly at the breakfast table, a little 
pale perhaps, but looking as splendid as only a lady 
can in her simplicity. And near her was Lepidus, 
spreading jam on buttered toast with irritating 
cheerfulness. It was he that hailed me first as I 
entered. 

“ Now, by all the Seven Hills, we are glad to see 
you ! Where have you been, cousin Louis ? When 
we parted, if I remember rightly, you were stand- 


LEPIDUS PHILOSOPHISES 229 

in g on your head in a peat hole, with that valiant 
steed of yours sitting on its haunches, and all the 
crows in the neighbourhood waiting to sup on your 
bodies. ,, 

Then the women got at me with pretty shrieks of 
sympathy, and I was stifled with questions, until 
my kindly mother came to the rescue, and after as- 
suring herself that my clothes were dry, and none 
of my bones broken, said that all was well that 
ended well, telling me with sweet instinctive 
shrewdness, what I longed to hear above all else, 
that nothing untoward had happened, that Miss 
Smith and the Centurion had found their way back, 
wet and hungry, but safe, when it was far too late 
to send me word, and that I, who had been devouring 
my heart out with dreadful fancies, had alone been 
the object of their anxieties. 

Thus ended outwardly a foolish incident, and it 
was not till long afterwards that I heard from the 
hesitating lips of the dear runaway herself how 
near comedy had been to sorrow. It was she who 
told me, when there were no longer any secrets 
between us, how the Roman had followed her into 
the wilderness of the hills, had ridden her down, 
and when they had got breath, there, amongst the 
dark pines and rocks, had made her dismount. She 
told me how in that lonely place, away from all help, 


2 3 o LEPIDUS THE CENTURION ’ 

save her own womanhood, he had proffered his love 
again, had asked her to ride on with him, pressed 
her to mount and ride with him “ out of the little 
world behind them, out through the gleaming gate- 
way which the lightning was making, into that new 
world his love would find for her, ,, conjuring such 
wonders from the to-come, that the black night was 
prismatic with his fancies, and to her senses, trem- 
bling under the spell of his power, the twining mist 
opened, it seemed, on a fairy realm of delight; and 
the arcades of the forest, decked in the violet 
drapery of the storm, invited them to where the 
passing gleams filled unknown worlds with won- 
der. He pleaded for her love with all the vantage 
which the past had given him; wooing her body 
through her subject spirit, like another Jove come 
down to woo a hapless shepherdess; now filling her 
mind with such splendid imagery of passion that 
the world became unreal beneath her, and then, 
“ turning mortal for her love/’ pleading submissively 
again, like a man pressing his suit on a woman who 
wavers. 

Here in the story, she who told it me in the long 
after paused, and sighed as though for a moment 
the ghosts of the lost splendours came again to 
mind, then laid her hand on my arm, and whispered 
with averted face: 


LEPIDUS PHILOSOPHISES 


231 


“ He failed. I returned ; I am yours.” 

It was not necessary, nor did I even ask her more ; 
it was enough that she had escaped, and had made, 
it seemed, some compact for mutual forgetfulness 
of that wild half-hour which enabled them to meet 
again with smiling faces. But all this, you will bear 
in mind, only came to my knowledge long after. 

That day of my return was peaceful enough. 
We men went down to the village inn to see a bull- 
terrier pup, which Mullens was thinking of buying 
for a cousin in Scotland, have its tail cut off; and 
the ladies walked across the meadows to see a new 
mangle at work, which my mother had set up, and 
held to be incapable of removing the frailest button 
that ever tempted Providence or soapsuds. We 
played croquet through the afternoon, and flirted 
platonically, and thus in divers ways we won our 
way to dinner-time, and the happy ease of the 
smoking-room afterwards. 

All day long I had been philosophising on the 
follies of the day before, and — believing at the time 
that all had gone prosaically between Priscilla and 
the Centurion — marvelling at my anxieties and false 
presentiments. Thus I was in the mood for specula- 
tions when, we found ourselves in the snug after-din- 
ner retreat, and I listened willingly when coming 
back from fetching a box of a favourite brand of my 


232 LEPIDUS TPIE CENTURION 


own cigars, I found Lepidus in talkative mood. 
Curiously enough he was saying, as I entered, that 
most of our mental pains were unnecessary, and 
much even of physical suffering avoidable. Both 
these things had their origin in the mind, declared 
the Roman, going off into that state of speculation in 
which I could never quite decide whether he was 
uttering his own convictions or but intellectually 
dreaming while half unconscious of what he said. 

“ It is quite possible,” quoth Lepidus, “ to bring 
one's mind under absolute control. In that state all 
circumstances of joy or pain are adventitious; they 
become the servants, not the masters, the playthings, 
not the whips of the controlled mind. And in a 
slightly less perfect degree the body also may be 
subjected. You hear of men on emergency per- 
forming great feats of endurance, of weaklings 
doing tasks of giants, and all the sensations of the 
material submitting to an imperative demand of the 
intellectual. It is curious you should not perceive 
that if you practised to rule your mind rigidly, and 
taught your body in turn to obey that intermediary, 
the miracles which startle you in a crisis might be- 
come the commonplace things of your every day. 
All bodily pain in this way could be reduced to dis- 
comfort, while you would not necessarily take the 
keenness off your pleasures, for the rush of the 


LEPIDUS PHILOSOPHISES 


2 33 

liberated hound is none the less glorious because 
he was flogged for riot yesterday.” 

Those other good fellows our guests never quite 
knew what to make of Lepidus, they were never 
quite sure he was not laughing at them; thus they 
sat in silence, and it was I that carried on the con- 
versation. It wandered that evening, I remember, 
over an infinitude of subjects, human and super- 
human, and some of the things Lepidus said were 
shocking, and some were strangely interesting to 
me especially, who knew from what strange source 
had come his inspirations. He lectured us lightly 
on living and dying, on birth and marriage, he 
passed lightly from Mrs. Grundy to the great pri- 
maeval laws which lie at the back of time ; and all the 
while there was that strange sense on me which they 
must have felt who out of the hollow mouth of the 
material Sphinx heard an unrecognisable voice ad- 
dressing them. 

At one time he spoke of marriage, and I was 
glad, on the whole, the Bishop had a cold in the 
head which kept him to his room that evening. 
Happy marriages, said the Roman, in substance, 
were those between associated spiritual essences, 
while unfortunate marriages were between hostile 
ones. 

“ I may take it,” said Lepidus, “ that you will 


234 LEPIDUS THE CENTURION 


allow without argument and by the force of your 
natural instincts that it is desirable mutual souls 
should be associated here as elsewhere. And since 
these souls are anxious and ready to meet, like 
friends parted in a throng, any means by which 
they could be brought together would add im- 
mensely to the sum of human happiness. Hence 
arises the seriousness of the mistake you commit 
in making marriage so inviolable — oh, all right! do 
not wince, I will be discreet ! What I mean is this. 
Your man and woman ill- wed is an abomination 
alike to society here and to the systems of the uni- 
verse. The mistake such ill-assorted couples have 
made must be of inevitable frequency, but your 
blunder is in making the way out so difficult. I can 
imagine,” said the Roman, leaning back and blow- 
ing a blue cloud of tobacco smoke up to the ceiling, 
“ a state of society which has passed beyond all 
those conceptions of virtue based on the jealousies of 
remote ancestors, and which could give to this ques- 
tion the supernatural importance it deserves. I can 
imagine such a society allowing to the friend-seeker 
in the soul-throng an immense indulgence, and treat- 
ing with wise indifference the mistakes he or she 
might make in the search. There might even be 
such a thing as a College of Love, where postulates 
could retire for mutual trial.” 


LEPIDUS PHILOSOPHISES 


235 

“ My dear Lepidus,” I cried, “ think what Mrs. 
Grundy would say ! ” 

“ I know what you mean/' he replied; “but, my 
gentle cousin, the systems of life and the universe 
were not constructed with a view to the susceptibili- 
ties of that worthy lady. There is your mistake; 
you are still so near to your ancestors, your ideas of 
virtue are so childish and trivial, that you cannot 
see life, its errors, and its objects in due proportion. 
There was evolved in the remote a code of rules, 
desirable and excellent in their way, but allowing 
nothing for that growth of understanding, that 
broadening perception, which comes as human life 
itself gets nearer to the great final understanding; 
and of this code you have made fetish. But I 
fear I bore you, and am not very lucid at that. 
How do you like my reasonings ? ” 

And I answered, shaking my head, that I under- 
stood them little, and liked them less. 

“ Of course you do not understand them, my dear 
Louis; were it otherwise they would not be my 
speculations, but your accepted facts. You are a 
good-tempered prig, fully characteristic of your 
age; and who am I that I should jostle you into a 
riper state of wisdom against all your inclination 
and readiness ? ” 

Then a little later on, when we had discussed 


236 LEPIDUS THE CENTURION 


some other matters of kindred nature, he got upon 
the subject of souls, their whence and whither, and 
I was more than ever glad my lord Bishop’s cold 
had sent him to bed. 

“ The soul develops, it seems to me,” said the 
Centurion presently, “ no less than the intellect and 
body — the realms of the invisible are peopled from 
the realms of the material. In that far-away time 
when man rose from the ignoble, that which he now 
prides himself on as his soul arose too. And in 
the rudimentary body of the babe, growing as it 
grows, is the nucleus of a soul ready to be affected 
by the circumstances of its surroundings during 
life, but as essentially the result of previous soul- 
growths as the body which clothes it is the result 
of previous generations.” 

“ But,” I said, mentally limping after him, “ how 
then can one soul be continuous in many bodies if 
within each body there grows with it a fresh 
essence? ” 

The Roman hesitated as though he found the 
question difficult to answer rather from my defi- 
ciencies than from his ignorance. Then he replied, 
“ The only answer I can give you lays me open to 
criticism on many points ; I can but say, that though 
in general a new soul rises with each birth, and 


LEPIDUS PHILOSOPHISES 


2 37 


afterwards passes out to people worlds you do not 
yet even guess at, yet sometimes, for some special 
purpose — to finish some errand, to await some 
friend, to fulfil some compact — a soul will re-inhabit 
for as many generations as need be a succession of 
bodies, or, unlodged in that way, will hang about 
some familiar corner of this cabbage-plot of a world 
of yours — to your probable fright and its own in- 
convenience — awaiting fulfilment.” 

“ Then you really mean to say there is more 
than one kind of soul amongst us here?” 

“ Yes, I suppose that is how you would put it. 
To you it may be startling to think of some souls 
that are quite new, as new as their bodies, making 
a virgin start; while others, their comrades and 
companions, are old stagers as it were, come back to 
keep an appointment, or for something they had 
forgotten. But even you yourself have an inkling of 
this. I heard you speak at lunch to-day of some- 
one as having a great soul in a little body, while 
of others you talked as having lifelong ‘ antipathies ’ 
and obvious ‘ missions.’ They had missions, friend 
Louis, if I recognised them aright in your chatter, 
they had antipathies; and great souls making shift 
for a time with poor bodies ! They were the bronzed 
travellers of life, returned and mixing lightly in 


238 LEPIDUS THE CENTURION 

the throng of your green, country-bumpkin souls 
who have never been over their spiritual parish 
boundaries. ,, 

“ And beyond that,” I asked in a minute or two, 
“ beyond the beyond — what comes then? You have 
spoken of the here, and the passing out, and the 
returning perhaps; but how about those souls who 
acknowledge contentment, who have no detaining 
causes, who do not come back. Tell me,” I said 
eagerly, “ what of them, where do they go ? ” 

But the Roman shook his head. “ There you 
ask me something which is as much beyond my 
grasp as to-morrow. Yet,” he said, with a sudden 
softening of his tone, for he saw I was disappointed, 
“ to-morrow will certainly come and bring its ex- 
planations with it. And more than that, when it 
comes you will certainly be there to find it as you 
have fashioned it to-day. If well, then well; if ill, 
then open to betterment. Why should you be fright- 
ened at the prospect of many spiritual to-morrows 
not unlike the yesterdays you have known of? Is it 
worthy of your manhood to sigh for one long eternal 
day of sleek enjoyment? Has this little span of life 
down here exhausted all your capacities of self- 
fashioning? For my part,” said that splendid 
pagan, stretching himself in his pride and the luxury 
of his self-sufficient strength, “ I could find it in me 


LEPIDUS PHILOSOPHISES 


239 


to pray to the gods for long ages of effort piled 
mountain high; and, knowing that pleasure dies 
when pain ends, would ask nothing better of them 
than to take my heaven and hell alternately as I went 
along.” 

Then the candles came, and, shaking the ashes 
from our pipes, we said good-night, and went to 
bed. 


CHAPTER XVI 


SOME REPROACHES AND A PROPOSAL 

1 SUPPOSE that strange guest of mine had to 
heart the axiom that all is fair in love and 
war, else I should be at a loss to know how 
he could have reconciled the terms of apparent 
good fellowship on which we existed with the im- 
placable rivalry in love existing between us. Some- 
times it had seemed to me that the Roman was un- 
consciously living a double existence, and therein 
lay the explanation of the anomaly. To love and 
win, fair or foul, the lady who was mine was by 
the strange irony of chance a matter of instinct with 
him, the deathless bequest of all those ages of wait- 
ing that had gone before. When occasion offered it 
became an imperious necessity in which he forgot 
all else. When the incentive was not present, he 
was but the bold, bright soldier of fortune, with- 
out fear and without animosity, the repository in 
his spiritual aspect of a quaint medley of heathen 
fancies, softened by the knowledge I had lent him 
along with more than half my vital force, and col- 


240 


SOME REPROACHES AND A PROPOSAL 241 

oured by those strange inspirations which had come 
to him when he lay asleep many ages in the porch 
of death. Even now I cannot quite disentangle his 
philosophy, far less can I be responsible for it. To 
hear him talk in the evening was to inhale the mystic 
fumes which fired the Delphic priestess; to ponder 
on what he had said in the morning was like waking 
on a tantalising dream that excited speculation with- 
out satisfying it. I can but recall his strange 
heresies, though they lose in my telling all the magic 
force his personality lent, and leave them uncriti- 
cised as incidents of the narrative. 

As for our personal relations, they were like those 
of two actors who are rivals before the curtain, and 
the best of friends behind; yet there again must I 
hesitate, and half disown my own explanations even 
as I make them, for our rivalry was as continuous 
as our friendship. Keenly as I foresaw the danger 
of his presence and knew the great stake we both 
played for, I never could quite rid my mind of the 
idea that it was some game we played at, some huge 
pretence which I was compelled by unseen influences 
to go on with in fear and trembling, though the 
terrors were imaginary and the forfeits lay in 
stronger hands than mine. 

Yet it was all uncommonly realistic if Fate, after 
all, was only laughing at us, and the Roman, while 


242 LEPIDUS THE CENTURION 


still nominally my friend, laid himself out to win 
my lady from me in a way that, had the circum- 
stances been less quaint, must have abruptly put an 
end to friendship and hospitality both. 

I did not know, you will remember, at the time 
how he had pressed his suit upon Priscilla when 
he had her alone in the hills; perhaps even now I 
do not know the whole truth. But Priscilla had told 
my mother, who was more than a mother to her, 
of that episode; and my parent, with the anger of 
a hen in defence of her brood, had gone straight to 
the culprit, and put the matter to him in a way 
which, gentle as is that lady generally, was, I have 
reason to believe, a striking exception to the rule. 

I was not present, but heard something about it 
afterwards — heard how that kindly dame faced the 
disturber of our domestic peace, and held his con- 
duct up in a variety of most unfavourable aspects 
for him to select the worst from. Like all self-re- 
strained people she had a very biting tongue when 
it was given liberty; and I could well imagine how 
she began paternally, lighting her angry fires as she 
went along, and treating the offender to a steadily 
rising stream of reproach, bitter enough to move the 
remorseful sentiments of most of the young men she 
knew, but strangely, quaintly unsuited to the drama 
whereof only the superficial aspects came within her 


SOME REPROACHES AND A PROPOSAL 243 

ken. And I could fill up what I heard afterwards 
by well imagining the mild wonder with which the 
dark Roman eyes opened as the object of the inter- 
view was explained — the faint tinge of colour that 
dawned under a skin browned by suns that shone 
almost before history began, when my mother cast 
at him reproaches not one of which he would have 
stood unmoved from living man. I can imagine 
how his interest quickened as it always quickened 
where hearts beat high in pleasure or anger, and 
how he heard her to the end when, spent and not far 
from crying, she sat down at last. I can imagine 
how, one hand on thigh where his sword had used 
to be, the other extended open as he was wont to 
stand, he had set out to answer her. 

That answer was not satisfactory. It was not 
entirely on the lines of unconditional apology for the 
errors of headlong youth, or humble decision to 
profit by her counsel, she had looked for. My cousin 
Alice, who by chance saw her leave her boudoir 
on the occasion in question, says she came out like 
an Inquisitor who had been put on the rack by some 
unabashed heretic, and was too dazed by the enor- 
mity of the incident to remember exactly what had 
happened. 

It appears Lepidus had got up to make some 
half bantering answer, holding, as he said, the 


244 


LEPIDUS THE CENTURION 


matchless attractions of the lady in question to ex- 
cuse all his errors, and pointing out, perhaps, that 
by the laws of venery while game was still on foot it 
was any man’s to shoot at. I could imagine how 
lightly he would begin; but, then warming with 
the subject, it seemed he somehow stirred his ancient 
other self, which always lay under his genial conven- 
tionality, as the hot lava lies under the pleasant 
olive gardens of his own Italian plains, and in a 
minute the courteous modern gentleman, mildly in 
love, disappeared in the fiery Imperial soldier, hold- 
ing life, and even honour itself, as nothing com- 
pared to the furtherance of his passion. 

My poor mother ! How she must have gasped as 
the hot Tuscan blood got uppermost, and the de- 
scendant of a score of emperors poured out before 
her the full measure of his strength and love — called 
a whole hierarchy of pagan gods to witness that 
never mortal had loved and longed and waited as he 
had done ; and was he now to stand tamely by and see 
another carry off the prize, the sweet-eyed Pretor- 
ian’s daughter, for whom he had derided his royal 
uncle’s anger, and taken a poor captain’s place 
amongst the legions, that he might follow her into 
exile? For whom he had discarded all the glitter and 
luxury of the Mother City, and fought and worked 
with the meanest of the brass-bound rogues he led ; 


SOME REPROACHES AND A PROPOSAL 245 


had walked through wild weeks of winter weather 
by her litter side, cheering the snow-bound Gaulish 
tracks with laughter and stories, happy only if he 
could lighten the tedium of her travel. Was he 
to give her tamely up for whom he had courted 
every danger of the northern seas and lain out at 
night on the British hillsides, watching over her 
safety in forgetfulness of all else ? Was he to stand 
with head down-bent like a third-rate captive in a 
victor’s show, while another went by in triumph 
with the prize, a knock-kneed, white-livered boy 
brought up on pap and psalters ? He who had been 
first into Calleva, and hand to hand between watch- 
ing hosts, had borne down Ambia and fired the pali- 
sades of Luguvallium, and had wrung honours and 
riches from the accursed British barbarians, all for 
the love of the white maid whom fate dangled for- 
ever before his eyes, and would never suffer him to 
touch? No ! By the Black Tablet under the Forum 
stones ; by every temple porch that catches the dazzle 
of Father Tiber when the sun goes down over the 
seaward marshes! by the honour of Vesta, and the 
belt of bloody Mars himself, he would wrap these 
hills in fire again, and paint every doorpost red from 
here to the salt waves of Deva sooner than be thus 
stultified ! 

Happily the torrent of his invective fell on my 


246 LEPIDUS THE CENTURION 


mother’s mind merely with a numbing effect. It 
completely quenched her own indignation as a larger 
conflagration swallows up a lesser, and while she 
gathered scarcely a word of his meaning, and missed, 
Heaven bless her! all his classical allusions, the 
general effect was to convince her that she was in the 
presence of a dangerous lunatic. 

Nor were her views modified when Lepidus, 
after a few angry turns up and down the room, sud- 
denly confronted her, and, changing his fierce ex- 
clamations to a tone of eager persuasiveness, asked 
whether, after all, the matter could not be settled 
in some friendly way, say by a gladiatorial combat 
between us two, each to choose his own weapons, 
and I, in view of those physical shortcomings to 
which he alluded with clearness but delicacy, to have 
any reasonable advantage that might be agreed upon. 
He reminded my parent, who had not opened the 
covers of an ancient history for forty years, that this 
was a favourite mode of settling little difficulties of 
the kind amongst the Boeotians, and he pointed out 
that life was apt to run too much in grooves at 
Caster Manor, and a gladiatorial display on the 
lawn — with nets and tridents, for instance — to 
which the gentry and villagers might be admitted 
at so much a head, would certainly be interesting. 
The body of the defeated would, of course, be at 


SOME REPROACHES AND A PROPOSAL 247 


the disposal of the victor according to ancient cus- 
tom, and Miss Smith would hold her nuptial feast 
that evening in the lists. 

Or, he ran on, without giving my mother a 
chance of getting to the door she was nervously 
eyeing all the time, if she feared to have her gerani- 
ums trampled on, or doubted whether his good 
cousin Louis’s legs would uphold him through the 
onslaught, were there here no go-betweens to be had, 
no skilful experts in straightening these questions 
out, such as they had in Rome, who for a considera- 
tion would go into the matter and arrange it ami- 
cably? If it was dower the lady stuck at, he had 
friends at home who, between love and fear of him, 
would lend enough to buy up twenty British prince- 
lings. If it was position, why, his uncle the Emperor, 
though there had been asperities between them, had 
enough of royal discretion to accept a thing already 
accomplished; and once again in the imperial fa- 
vour, there was not a viceroy or satrap, there was 
not a consul or praetor from here to Ind who would 
not welcome him as an ally and comrade. By all 
the splendours of the Seven Hills, Priscilla wedded 
to him, the merry tinkle of her silver harness bells 
should sound all down the Long White Street on 
gala days; black were the slaves she should have; 
and red and ankle deep the roses at her feet at dance 


248 LEPIDUS THE CENTURION 


and banquet. Libya should send her silks, and 
Neros gold, and Egypt sweet scents and tinctures — 
never lady should have shone so before; her beauty 
and fame should spread to every Court from Tiber 
to Euphrates, and none should share it with her. 
No! No other damsel that he might have taken 
before, or should take afterwards to soften his hours 
of soldier solitude, should ever come between him 
and this peerless light he sought ! 

Here my dear mother broke the spell and fairly 
fled. Happily for her peace of mind, she grasped 
little or nothing of the Roman’s meaning. Not for 
her was his allusion to a sovereign kinsman or the 
dead city whose splendours still had life and being 
in his mind; not for her were his reminiscences of 
travel in dim ages, when no travellers went abroad 
except by sword point, or recollections of those lib- 
eral nuptial arrangements whereby the ancient mas- 
ters of the world made the marriage yoke so light to 
bear. She heard nothing but the confused tumult 
of his eloquence, saw nothing but his passion, and 
only grasped the one plain fact that, against all es- 
tablished propriety, he was enamoured of a bespoken 
damsel — enamoured and unrepentant. 

It was for that reason she fled as cousin Alice 
had seen her, and took me solemnly to task that eve- 
ning on the indiscretion of cultivating chance ac- 


SOME REPROACHES AND A PROPOSAL 249 


quaintances in general, and the desirability in par- 
ticular that I should take an early opportunity of 
hinting to Lepidus that perhaps we were keeping 
him at the Manor from other friends who would be 
glad to see him in turn. 

Other friends ! Oh, who were those other friends ; 
those shadows; those dim remembrances of valour 
and beauty ; those dead human leaves swept out upon 
the void beaches of time, that he could go to? I 
heard her silently, and bowed my head to my dear 
parent’s gentle logic, while I groaned in spirit. 


CHAPTER XVII 


SO AS BY FIRE 

M EANWHILE we had a spell of ripening 
autumn weather, that climatic episode of 
the year which seems to be reflected in 
many who are not agricultural by a desire to garner 
the outlying fruits of the twelve months’ industry, 
whatever it may have been, just as spring tempts the 
same people instinctively to sow the seeds of a fu- 
ture harvest. And possibly the gods, who have 
hidden knowledge everywhere for us to win by 
our own effort, have hidden the true reflection of 
life in the sequence of the seasons — the recurring 
ambitions of spring, the efforts of the prime mid- 
season, the realisation of harvest, and the pause of 
winter, so that we may learn the truth from these 
great taskmasters as the luckless urchin compre- 
hends at last the wisdom of those proverbs which his 
dear, dirty fingers trace in laborious repetition down 
the pages of his copy-book. 

Lepidus, it seemed to me, was restless those days 
while the pears ripened slowly on the red brick wall 
250 


SO AS BY FIRE 


25 T 


behind the orchard. He was as restless as a migra- 
tory falcon who has lost the best quills in his wings 
just when the flight is on, and chafes to see how 
slowly the new ones come. He gave me the idea 
of being full of a strange disquiet, as though some- 
thing in him that was not of the ordinary everyday 
world were preparing for a change. I cannot set 
down the impression his manner aroused exactly in 
words, but I felt it keenly nevertheless, and with 
duller comprehension than his waited for what 
should happen. 

It was a spell of warm, still weather, such as that 
wherewith the autumn will sometimes close up its 
accounts with the vegetable world. The big yellow 
wasps dug juicy hollows into those pears on the 
wall quicker than my mother could pick and store 
them; the ripe red apples fell with audible thuds 
on the dry orchard turf in the still afternoons, the 
lowermost leaves of the elms turned yellow and 
began to fall for want of moisture, and the meadow 
gates shrank back a thought from their posts and 
shut quite differently to their wont in moister 
weather. Even the beasts in the field were not so 
hungry as they used to be; the swallows, in lines 
on the roof ridge, talked quietly, but all day long, 
of the coming exodus; the big ants swarmed from 
the path edges; and the thatch, the sparrows had 


252 LEPIDUS THE CENTURION 


loosened when making their nests in the spring- 
time, slid in little glittering yellow avalanches from 
its place on the cowsheds, it was so dry. 

As for us, we were rather bored by the sequence 
of those bright days. We developed an extraordi- 
nary interest in cooling drinks — even the good 
Bishop listened with obvious interest while we talked 
of such ungodly things as gin-slings and corpse-re- 
vivers; and when we were not drinking or making 
drinks we shook our heads in silent conclave over 
the prospects of the turnip crop, or wondered 
whether the grass on the croquet lawn would ever 
come to its natural hue again. We got quite angry 
over trivial things, and hated the man who invented 
linen collars. 

One evening, after we had endured another day 
of refulgent brilliancy, when the grateful night 
came we spent it pleasantly enough in the veran- 
dah, watching the moon slowly climb out of the 
black undulations of the firs on what I had made up 
my mind to call in future “ Mount Lepidus.” The 
ladies went to bed at last, and as it was too hot for 
billiards we men still sat in the darkness talking 
slowly of casual matters, and finding I do be- 
lieve, more pleasure in the companionship of each 
other’s low-pitched voices than in any point of the 


SO AS BY FIRE 


253 


desultory conversation. I think we had been dis- 
cussing the right and wrong way of curing mole- 
skins before making them up into waistcoats, and 
the Bishop had observed that he was certain there 
was a wrong way, because he once had a pew- 
opener whose moleskin vest crackled so loudly when 
he sang a hymn that no one else could keep their 
places in the service. 

On this a voice, which I think was Smythers of 
Balliol, asked from the shadows what were the 
wages of a pew-opener, and whether there were 
many vacancies for ambitious young men in the 
profession. Someone else from another chair volun- 
teered the information that he had once had a cousin 
who opened pews, and later on in life built himself 
a nice house down in Wales, but whether as the re- 
sult of that calling or not he could not venture to 
say. This led us away from moleskins to a retro- 
spective and historical inquiry into the antiquity of 
pew opening, which in turn merged insensibly into 
an examination of ancient Church history, and some 
speculations on the results of the interference of the 
Byzantian Emperors with what might be termed 
the native and indigenous government of the early 
Church considered as a concrete whole, and not as a 
fundamental part of the social establishment of the 


254 LEPIDUS THE CENTURION 


age. By the time the conversation had got as far as 
this everyone but his reverence of Pewchester, who 
felt the subject congenial, was half asleep. 

For one, I was in a happy state of indifference — 
that happy state of contented drowsiness which 
comes over the voyager whose canoe glides with 
swift, sleepy smoothness towards the brink of the 
unseen falls ahead. I was watching the broad orb 
of the full moon perched delicately on the topmost 
twigs of the fir trees, and listening to the cry of 
the coots disturbed by a water-rat amongst the 
rushes in the lake, when presently a pause fell upon 
the talk of the company. 

Then Smythers asked : 

“ I say, Allanby, are they burning rubbish some- 
where in your garden at this hour of the night, or 
has Mullens lit one of those cigars he bought in 
the village yesterday?” Beyond question, as he 
spoke we were all aware of a faint pungent odour 
drifting over our nostrils on the light night air, an 
aroma not altogether unpleasant at first, coming 
as it did mixed with the scent of heliotrope and 
cooled by evening dew, yet somehow very striking 
and thought holding. 

“ It can’t be Mullens’ cigar,” quoth the under- 
graduate, “ it is not half so nasty.” 

“ And it has much more body in it. This is good 


SO AS BY FIRE 


255 


strong rubbish anyhow, while Mullens’ cheroots 
are neither.” So we lapsed into silence again for 
a minute or two, until the sculptor, who was sitting 
with his face to the rearward portion of the house, 
started up. 

“ Hullo ! ” he cried, jumping to his feet, and 
pointing excitedly towards where the servants’ 
quarters stood, “ what is that yellow shine on the 
under sides of the walnut leaves ? ” 

We all looked round, of course, and there to our 
horror was a sight not easily to be forgotten. Over 
that part of the rearward buildings, as I think I 
remember to have said before, there were some tall 
trees of the kind Mullens had mentioned ; they actu- 
ally overhung the courtyard and adjacent windows 
of the wing joining the stables to the main house 
in the complicated geography of our dear old 
Manor; and now, as we looked, an extraordinary 
thing was taking place. All the leaves of these 
trees, that had been a sombre cloud a few minutes 
before, backed by the blackness of the night only one 
shade darker than themselves, were now flushing 
on their under surfaces with a strange hectic tinge ! 
They were becoming defined, turning each frond 
and leaflet to burnished rosy red even while we 
watched. Never did any vegetable in Aladdin’s 
gardens look so weirdly magnificent as those trees 


256 LEPIDUS THE CENTURION 


of ours, and even as we gazed they came out re- 
fulgent and tremulous up to their topmost twigs. 
All down the servants' roof ridge, just visible from 
the lawn to which we had rushed, a dozen grey 
spirals a yard or two apart rose twining delicately 
into the night air, taking rosy hues on their upmost 
points, as though Aladdin’s garden were being in- 
creased by the growth of some wondrous strain 
of magic creepers, more prolific than anything 
human gardeners ever heard of! We stared and 
stared until with a sudden clatter all the pigeons 
burst from the cotes, and flew here and there 
through the dazzle like glorious butterflies, until they 
found their senses and fled away into the darkness 
behind. Then it did not need the one word that 
rose on every lip to tell us the house was on fire ! 

Up spake the Roman, first as usual : “ Louis, 

your villa burns, and your poor slaves are bound for 
Hades before their time! Quick man, into the 
house and warn the women. I will get ladders, and 
water if there is any to be had, and rescue some of 
these sleek serfs of yours; their death would touch 
me very closely." And away he went, while I 
ran into the house in haste, to warn my mother and 
the others. But they already knew only too well — 
the upper corridors were full of stinging yellow 
smoke, and every open bedroom door showed fair 


SO AS BY FIRE 


257 


ladies, newly risen, making such hasty toilets as, 
God wot! they never made before. I ran to my 
mother’s room, and found that dear lady, with her 
mouth full of hairpins, doing up her grey hair, while 
she prayed for all our safety with all the fervour 
those pins would let her. “ Mother,” I cried, “ down 
to the hall, and never mind the hair to-night: you 
will be safe there, and I will send the others to 
you. Where is Miss Smith? ” 

“ Go and find her, Louis, for heaven’s sake — she 
may still be sleeping ! ” I did not need twice bid- 
ding, but went off like the wind; and there by a 
door, in a long, hooded overcloak we all knew well 
since she sometimes wore it in the garden of an' 
evening, stood Miss Smith. She had turned on the 
electric lights in her passage, and was going from 
door to door, rousing those within, and, though 
as pale as the soft linen which peeped from her 
half-buttoned coverture, was sweet and collected 
as ever. 

“ Down to the hall ! ” I cried, “ dear Miss Smith. 
There you will be safe ” 

“ Oh, but I am in no danger here as it is. Surely 
it is the servants who are in danger! Do go to 
them.” 

“ Very well, then ; Lepidus has gone there, and I 
will go too if you will come down.” I thought she 


25 8 LEPIDUS THE CENTURION 


winced a little at the Roman name, but she merely 
said, “Yes, yes, but go to them, Louis; the fire 
is there, and it is for them I fear.” So away I 
went, for it was no time for parley, and on the 
main staircase nearly ran into the arms of Mullens, 
who was coming up hot and breathless. 

“ Allanby,” he shouted, “ your Roman friend 
burst in the doors of the yard to look for ladders, 
and the ladders were no't there — every one has been 
taken for the rick-making a mile away ! ” 

“ And the fire hose won’t work,” cried Smythers, 
who had come in at his heels ; “ the pond has shrunk 
to nothing, and black mud gurgled out of the nozzle 
before we had been at the wheel a minute ! Lepidus 
broke in the garden door of the servants’ wing, 
and, three times rushed within, and three times 
came out with all his clothes smoking; it is burn- 
ing there like a furnace, and the staircase has gone 
down. Ah ! here he comes himself ! ” And as the 
speaker stopped, in rushed the Centurion, black and 
scorched, with the axe with which he had been 
cleaving down doors still clutched in his hand, and 
looking pale, I thought, for the once. 

“ Louis ! ” he cried, spying me, “ surely there 
is some back way through this ant-heap of a house 
of yours to the slaves’ quarters — by Pluto’s self I 
never meant to get these poor thralls of yours into 


SO AS BY FIRE 


259 


such a hell. Show me the way, or better still tell 
me where it lies and run round yourself to the 
courtyard. There is still water in that husky old 
pump of yours, if one could but get it up fast 
enough, and black sludge in that horse-mire you 
have saved for this occasion. Hold the flames down 
for all you are worth, cousin, while I cut a way 
through here to these roasting servitors/’ 

As he finished speaking, Priscilla came down, 
and, as she knew even more of the house than I did, 
I hastily handed him over to her ; while I myself ran 
out of the hall and round to where the court- 
yards were all aglow, and the walnuts now shone 
in coppery splendour with a rolling canopy of smoke 
above them, as though they were growing over the 
mouth of Tophet. 

The fire had broken out just where the secondary 
buildings branched off from the main block, and 
had the wind continued to blow as it had done all 
day nothing could have saved the Manor. Fortu- 
nately it had turned; before it the flames ran all 
down the range of store-rooms and much-timbered 
larders, above which the domestics slept, cutting 
them off with singular completeness from the court- 
yard below. There were no ladders available, no 
water; while the foolish, frantic women could be 
seen, through the haze of smoke hiding their win- 


26 o lepidus the centurion 


dows, running to and fro in wild dismay. Down 
in the yard an ever-growing crowd of men and 
women from the outside cottages were shouting 
and working with feverish energy at those pumps 
that gurgled and choked with the mud which was 
all they could draw from the ponds. And all my 
mother’s prize chickens were cackling madly; all 
the pigs in the sties over the wall wailing and grunt- 
ing, though in no real danger, as if the throes of 
dissolution were already upon them ; and our 
coachman’s grey parrot, lately bought of a wander- 
ing sailor, had broken loose, and was sitting on the 
roof ridge swearing horribly. 

It was as wild a scene as one could hope to see; 
and as I stood staring at the flames, while a score of 
futile expedients to rescue the unhappy men and 
women chased each other through my mind, a sud- 
den shout rose from the crowd, and above the crack- 
ling of the timbers and bursting of overheated win- 
dow-panes there came a sound of hammering, fierce 
tumultuous hammering, until, in a minute or so, 
a little forgotten trap-door in the roof of the Manor, 
sometimes used to let workmen up for repair to the 
roof, splintered, and flew from its hinges, and out 
through the broken frame-work jumped Lepidus! 
He sprang down the red tiles as nimbly as a cat, 
crossed the low coping, the only thing there sepa- 


SO AS BY FIRE 


261 

rating the level roofs, at a bound, and came running 
along the leads above us as though he had lived all 
his life upon roofs. When they saw him all the 
crowd sent up a yell of welcome which, for a time, 
hushed even the screaming women inside. 

He came nearly opposite to where I was standing, 
a burnished figure in the strong glare against 
the black sky, and set to work upon the roof with 
his axe in a way wonderful to behold. He scat- 
tered those tiles about him like dead leaves, cut 
through the tie-pieces, and, taking a longer grip of 
the axe, lopped lath and plaster underneath till the 
white dust rose in a volcano; and in an extraordi- 
narily short space of time there was a hole through 
the roof big enough for one man at a time to crawl 
from. Inside meanwhile they had been aware 
of what he was doing — had got a table under the 
coming hole, so that when the Centurion threw 
away his weapon and shouted down the chasm half a 
dozen hands rose instantly in response. 

Helped by those inside, he drew them out like 
chickens from a bag. The groom and the butler; 
Janet, the pretty light-haired pantrymaid; the dairy 
girls; the scullery maids; the cook — they came out 
of that smoky abyss one after another in comic 
haste. Lepidus would stand no thanks or emotion. 
He sent them scuttling up the leads, over the tiles, 


262 LEPIDUS THE CENTURION 


and up to the trapdoor, where Mullens and another 
gripped and dragged them in without ceremony 
or decorum. The stout cook failed in the escalade 
of the tiles, and had to be hauled in on her back, 
like a sack of flour; the equally portly butler, who 
would not be helped, three times essayed the same 
slippery climb, and three times rolled back “ like 
a gigantic white beetle struggling out of a sand 
pit,” as the irreverent Smythers said. It would have 
been comical to see those poor people come out of 
one hole and, dodging across the smoking roofs, 
drop into another, if it had not been so pathetic. 

I was still watching them when another shout 
was raised behind, “ The stables ! the stables are 
on fire.” And, alas! a burning flake had blown in 
at an open loft door, had fallen on a great stock of 
straw and hay, and filled all the upper part of the 
stables with flame in less time almost than it takes 
to write it. This, however, mattered comparatively 
little. There were no lives in danger ; while, the fire 
being overhead, all we had to do was to loosen the 
doors, lead out the frightened horses, and leave the 
rest in the hands of Providence and our insurance 
office. 

I therefore turned my back on the rescued do- 
mestics, and, running over to where the horses were 
already neighing loudly as they smelt the danger, 


SO AS BY FIRE 


263 


had their doors thrown open. By the light of a 
score of lanterns in the hands of ready helpers, we 
rushed in to the rescue, and the first thing that met 
my eye was “ Satan ” ready saddled and bridled, 
with a flat cloth strapped behind the saddle pillion 
fashion, and that accessory to all wickedness the 
boy Binks at his head. I can only wonder now 
that I was not more surprised to find the great 
horse thus ready for travel at such an hour; but 
in the excitement of the moment, surrounded by 
shouting grooms and angry steeds, who flung 
and jerked at their headstalls and struck sparks 
from the flint paving as they plunged about, and 
kicked over lanterns and buckets in their wild eager- 
ness to be outside — amidst the shouting and hubbub 
it was impossible to ask questions. “ Out with him, 
Binks,” I cried, “ hold on to him like fury : take him 
round to the front, where he will not see the 
flames ; ” and it seemed to me that imp of darkness 
smiled as he answered : 

“ That’s where I am a-taking him, sir.” Then 
I busied myself with the other poor brutes, think- 
ing no more of it for the time. And now comes 
the point of the evening. 

I had emptied the stables, and, as the Manor itself 
was practically safe, the fire burning itself out at 
its own sweet pleasure, I was naturally anxious 


264 LEPIDUS THE CENTURION 


to know how my mother was taking matters; and, 
after a few hurried instructions to the most capable 
men in the crowd, ran out of the yard and crossed 
the lawn towards the house itself. Stopping a 
moment on the edge of the shadows to get breath 
and straighten my tumbled raiment, I could see the 
garden front of the place before me clear in the 
tranquil moonlight, the empty windows ashine with 
the lights within (for the people were watching 
the blaze from the rearward passages), the hall doors 
and casements all wide open ; and then as I looked, 
to my amazement, a tall man strode out across the 
verandah lights, half leading, half dragging a muf- 
fled woman with him. For a moment they stood 
there, clear black figures against the brightness 
within; and then another shadow came up to them 
from outside, that of the black horse and the boy 
who led him. Even more quickly than I can write 
it, the man sprang into the saddle, and bending 
low spoke to the girl. For a moment she seemed 
to hesitate, and then gave him her hand as it 
seemed in blind obedience, and the next minute was 
seated behind him. I heard the thud of the horse’s 
hoofs coming towards me, and that exulting rattle 
of bit and bridle which “ Satan ” always gave 
when he shook his great head, and stretched him- 
self down to a gallop: they passed so close by me 


SO AS BY FIRE 265 

I could almost have touched them unseen. The 
man was Lepidus — no one else in the world rode as 
he did ; and the woman who clung to him so closely, 
with arms round his neck and head hidden on his 
broad shoulders, was Priscilla Smith ! 

Was it she? Yes, for certain it must have been. 
I had not seen her face; but the long, all-covering 
cloak was Priscilla’s beyond a doubt. I could 
scarcely believe my senses : the ground seemed rising 
and falling beneath my feet. I staggered back into 
the house, where the people were just coming back 
into the hall, and meeting my mother, “ Mother,” I 
cried passionately, “ where is Priscilla? ” 

“ Where is Miss Smith ? ” answered my parent 
cheerfully, “ why here, safe and well ; such a good 
girl she has been, so brave, so helpful, so ” 

“ I don’t believe she is here ! ” I cried in my anger. 
“ Let me see her.” 

“ Why, certainly, my dear. Priscilla, Priscilla ! 
here is Louis ravenous to see you in the flesh, and 
to assure himself you are unhurt,” called out my 
mother. 

The moment or two of intense suspense that fol- 
lowed seemed like an age to me ; and then the guests 
parted, and up from the rear came Priscilla herself, 
now in her ordinary every-day dress, and, smiling,, 
gracious, and charming, swept up to me and laid 
that all-assuring hand on my arm. 


CHAPTER XVIII 


THE LAST RESORT 

N OW I had the great discretion in that mo- 
ment of surprise not to make any rash in- 
quiries; a mystery there obviously was, a 
keen and startling mystery, but it was not one to be 
improved by general discussion. So strange was it 
that if Lepidus had not actually been absent from 
the company, if the skirts of that woman, whoever 
she was — so like to Pris, and yet as certainly not 
Pris — if her skirts had not actually brushed me in 
the dark, I should have been tempted to think the ex- 
citement of the evening had turned my head for the 
moment. But I held my peace, and then about 
half an hour afterwards, my mother mustered the 
whole household, servants included, and had a roll- 
call of us. Every one was present except the Cen- 
turion — and Janet the pantrymaid ! 

“ Good gracious ! ” exclaimed my parent, “ I hope 
nothing has happened to poor Janet; she was always 
a wayward girl, and a night like this would have 
quite upset her.” 


266 


THE LAST RESORT 


267 


“ No,” said Miss Smith, “ Janet is all right. She 
was one of the first Mr. Lepidus drew up through 
the hole he had made in the servants’ roof; and, 
as the poor girl was in a thin nightdress, and quite 
dazed, I brought her down here and wrapped her in 
my long cloak, and myself pulled the hood over her 
head, that she might dry her tears at leisure. Janet, 
I am sure, is somewhere safe by this time.” 

“ Yes,” said a deep voice in the doorway behind 
us, “ I am glad to be able to relieve your anxieties 
to that extent: I myself have just seen her into 
the safe keeping for the night of the woman at 
your gate lodge.” And, turning, there was Marcus 
Lepidus himself, looking very strange in face, and 
splashed with mud from top to toe. 

Then all on a sudden the truth flashed upon me, 
and, weak and undecided as I had grown, my hands 
clenched angrily at my side, and a bitter anger rose 
uncontrollably in my heart. I saw it all. That 
reckless being, half man, half spirit, I was har- 
bouring had planned it all — had set the house on fire 
himself (so I thought in the first rush of my wrath) 
in order that in the confusion he might have a 
chance of carrying Priscilla off ; and how nearly he 
had succeeded was patent. It was but a guess then, 
born of my jealousy; but it was right nevertheless. 
Long afterwards Janet told Priscilla, and she me in 


268 


LEPIDUS THE CENTURION 


turn, how in the smoke and confusion of the hall 
the Roman had suddenly strode up to her as she sat 
shrouded in Priscilla’s cloak, and, saying the dazed 
girl hardly knew what, had at last half persuaded, 
half commanded her to mount with him the horse 
waiting outside. He had galloped away with her 
into the country, how far she knew not, and it was 
only when he had to stop to tighten her pillion- 
strap that he took her in his arms and lavishing 
fierce endearment on her, had thrown back the hood 
that screened, as he thought, “ Prisca Quintilia,” 
and had found instead plain Janet Page! First he 
raged, and then he laughed, said the girl after- 
wards; and well I could imagine it. Then, after a 
time, gentle even in his lawlessness, he had dried the 
poor, misguided, bare-footed serving maid’s tears, 
had mounted again, and finally left her safe and 
unharmed at our lodge gates. 

This I did not know at the time ; and all the next 
day, spent mostly with my mother, planning new 
buildings amongst the blackened ruins of the serv- 
ant’s wing, my animosity and anger grew against 
him. Late in the evening we met by chance, 
alone, in the hall, and there I accused him of what 
he had done, and the worse he had hoped to do 
against me and mine. Lepidus, who had been all 
day as surly as one of those boars he used to hunt 


THE LAST RESORT 


269 


in the British woodlands long ago, and had drunk 
deep at dinner of our oldest bins — was not the man 
to stand that in any mood. Briefly, he dared me 
to come outside and settle the matter as, he said, 
these things were settled before the world grew so 
polite. I doubt if we had ever come to the ridicu- 
lous pass of a duel had the claret at dinner that night 
been newer, or our feelings less strained by recent 
events. For my part I have the highest apprecia- 
tion of personal honour, but the greatest contempt 
for the vindication of it by deadly combat. The 
mere fact that the just man is as likely to get 
pinked by the villain’s rapier or perforated by his 
bullet as the wrong effectually damns it in my mind. 
In the old days our Viking ancestors argued out all 
such disputes before the Thing , the assembly whose 
decision represented that public opinion which, until 
the gods interfere more directly in our affairs, is 
the best tribunal, provided it is truly ascertained, 
we can hope for. This was the duel legitimate. 
When it passed into personal combat it was beneath 
contempt, since nothing was so certain then as that 
the fight would go, without consideration of the 
question at issue, to the man whose muscles were the 
more tough; whose heart was more callous to the 
import of the moment, and whose stomach was bet- 
ter in order. 


27 O LEPIDUS THE CENTURION 


I had always felt this, and envied Lepidus the 
joyous whole-heartedness with which, when we had 
decided to “ have it out,” he turned to look for 
weapons. Everything that terrible man did gave 
him the fierce pleasure of an absorbing interest. I, 
on the other hand, was cursed with an infernal habit 
of thinking — a miserable, cankering capacity for 
seeing things in their true aspect, which sapped the 
foundations of happiness and watered down the 
very wine of life itself. 

“ Come on, sir,” said the Roman in a low voice, 
leading me eagerly into the hall, where the lights 
were burning dimly, most of the guests having gone 
to bed. “ What is it to be? What weapons have 
you? For, by the mortals, from the nails of your 
heroine Deliah to the flails out in the barn yonder, 
all are the same to me.” 

“ There are some rapiers there on the trophy — 
an equal pair,” I answered sullenly, indicating 
the place whence on that first evening of his 
coming — oh, so long ago — he had taken down a 
boar spear and half killed our butler. Little did we 
think then when we should next need weapons from 
those hooks! We went across the floor, and the 
Roman took down one of the two Spanish blades. 
They were long, fine, keen-pointed, basket-hilted, 
gold-embossed — the very things to have prided the 


THE LAST RESORT 


271 


heart of a truculent Castilian peer two hundred years 
ago; and my guest twirled his blade round to get 
the feel of it, and glanced up and down the figured 
steel for a minute or two, half in admiration, half 
in scorn of a thing so slender. Then he struck a 
swordsman's attitude before a high leather-backed 
chair, whirled the blade again, and with a sudden 
lunge drove it through the armorial chair-back up 
to the hilt. He drew it out, and putting his finger 
into the puncture : “ Jove ! ” he cried, “ What a little 
hole for a man’s soul to creep out of! And yet 
I suppose they knew their business who made these 
pretty toys — well to your liking I dare say, cousin, 
but not quite the articles we from the Tiber have 
hacked a bloody way to empire with. Nevertheless 
they will suffice to-night. Pick up your toasting- 
iron, friend Louis, and come on; there's a lovely 
moon shining, and all as still as all will be for one 
of us to-morrow." 

Outside, flushed and excited, he led the way over 
the smaller lawn toward the rhododendron shrub- 
bery, humming as he went a Tuscan verse under 
his breath, and making a lunge now and then at 
a rose leaf or tall poppy-head in the flower beds we 
passed. And I followed behind him, chin on chest, 
now, as always, dominated by his strong will — 
feeling myself a coward, and knowing myself a fool ; 


i 7 2 LEPIDUS THE CENTURION 


noting the petty incidents of the evening as a silly 
sheep on the way to the shambles stops a moment to 
nibble the grass by the roadside; noting the splen- 
did purple of the sky low down upon the horizon, 
and how it paled to tenderest silver-grey where the 
great moon, playing with a silver web of clouds, 
rode in silent state overhead ; noting the happy mur- 
mur of the river singing itself to sleep in the dark 
glen, and the sharp voices of the bats picking their 
way through the golden star fields in the east ; hear- 
ing the kine lowing on the crofts a mile away; and 
the crickets calling to each other in the dewy field; 
seeing the silver night-beads twinkle on the grass, 
and the white tears glittering in the blue eyes of the 
gentians — hearing and seeing these things as though 
they mattered a scrap to me, and so absorbed that I 
started guiltily when the wicket gate swung to be- 
hind us. 

And now in the open meadow the waif of royal 
Rome suddenly turned, and said, “ How, sir, does 
this place please you ? A fair sward ; no ’vantage for 
either in wind or weather, save the moonlight, and 
that we will share between. Will it do? ” 

“ Oh, yes,” was my answer, “ as well as any 
other.” 

“ Come on, then,” said the Roman, sticking his 
rapier point into the dewy turf while he turned up 


THE LAST RESORT 


m 


his cuffs, and then trying his blade again — bending 
it between his hands until the supple steel described 
an arc. “ Faugh, what a withy wand to put into 
a man’s hand ! How my old comrades of the XXth 
Legion would have laughed to see me handle such 
an over-grown bee-sting, such a pigeon spit! And 
yet perhaps it is suitable for the work in hand; 
come on, sir ! ” And, whirling round the blade, he 
struck me with the flat of it across the cheek. 

Honestly I doubt if he meant to; the light be- 
trayed, the length deceived him. But that blow 
stung my sleeping manhood. The words had been 
rude before it; but the blow, keen and cold across 
my face, ran into my veins, and with a start and 
shudder I drew myself together, and tossed the 
point of my own rapier up to my adversary’s 
breast — a man again in a moment. And Lepidus, 
seeing me stiffen, came gleefully on — as, to do him 
justice, he never failed to when danger lay ahead. 
He engaged me in a second, and quicker than it 
takes to write, we were at it gaily. 

Now, I for my part was a very fair fencer, and in 
the old college days had covered the leather fencing 
jerkin of more than one excellent swordsman with 
chalky “ points ” ; all that old knowledge coming 
back to me in an instant was my salvation. Also I 
had this advantage, that the Centurion fought with a 


274 LEPIDUS THE CENTURION 


weapon strange to him, both by theory and practice, 
a thing as unlike the heavy, chopping Roman sword 
he had always used in the past as could be. So much 
for my advantage. His was greater strength and 
activity, a reckless courage, and a fiery zeal which 
nerved his arm and filled his brain and gave him, as 
doubtless it had often done before, the dreadful force 
of a dozen colder men. In brief, there was little to 
choose between us ; and, my blood once up, we went 
at it for two or three minutes with ever increasing 
eagerness. Then the Roman drew first blood, mak- 
ing a furious lunge at me, which I half guarded; 
his rapier point flashed off my hilt, and going 
through the top of my shoulder lifted a little strip 
of flesh, which gave way as he recovered, and bled 
out of all proportion to the wound. 

Henceforward I noticed with the strange indiffer- 
ent interest one often attaches to such things in 
emergency, that only the lower half of his sword 
shone when he whirled it in the moonlight, the rest 
was red. Two minutes afterward I parried another 
thrust, and in the recovery cut the Tuscan across 
the wrist — not badly, but enough to glove his fight- 
ing hand with crimson, and set those strong white 
teeth of his, and bring the real fighting look into 
the handsome face that shone upon me in all the fas- 
cination of its contending passions as now and then 


THE LAST RESORT 


2 75 


I got the moonlight on it. There was no one to cry 
a welcome halt, no one to separate us, and the 
Roman, fired by the smart of that cut, pressed me 
with redoubled fury, raining cuts and lunges that 
rattled on my guards like winter hail, environing me 
with a glimmer of steel, scorning my science, and 
beating me ever backwards by the sheer fury of 
his onset. Quicker and quicker came my breathing, 
and more and more giddily the stars swung round 
and round us — it was reduced to a sheer matter of 
endurance; and how could I hope to contend with 
those iron muscles, and the furious courage that had 
won in a hundred fights against far longer odds ? 

Round and round we went, stamping the meadow 
grass down in a blackened circle, cutting, parrying, 
and lunging, with a heart-wholeness that took light 
reckoning of any science. The moon went in and 
out between the clouds, and the bats circled squeak- 
ing round our heads; sooner or later some luckless 
plunge, some sudden ’vantage to one or the other, 
must have turned that grim folly into black tragedy ; 
but just when the crisis was at hand, and I at least 
could not have kept the game going for many min- 
utes more, a tall, white figure stepped swiftly be- 
tween us in the full shine of the moon, and, making 
no more of our weapons than if they had been wil- 
low wands, held up two white hands, and exclaimed 


276 LEPIDUS THE CENTURION 


in a voice that stayed our ardour in an instant, 
“ Stop, stop, I command you ! ” 

It was Miss Smith; and, what between fatigue 
and loss of blood from my hurt, I could scarcely 
make up my mind for a moment, as I fell panting 
back, whether she was there in flesh or spirit. 

Seldom has a mortal lady, lately come from iced 
coffee and music in a modern drawing-room, looked 
more bewitching. Priscilla had gone to her room 
some little time before we left the house, and, partly 
disrobing, had opened her window for a space to look 
out on the night. Now it happened that her case- 
ment faced the very lawn and thicket beyond which 
we were acting like silly boys in defence of our 
manhood, and thus it happened that the lady, turn- 
ing her pretty eyes upon the splendid peacefulness 
of the evening, was presently aware of a most in- 
harmonious sound. Surely she must have thought, 
no workmen could be hammering away like that 
so late afield, no mowers were whetting their scythes 
at such an untimely hour? that steely rattle never 
came from the river, no bird or beast ever made such 
a sound! Then, as she listened, all on a sudden 
the meaning of it flashed upon her quick woman’s 
mind; and, snatching a shawl from a chair-back, 
she rushed from her room and down the stairs. 

There she was before us, slippered, short kirtled, 


THE LAST RESORT 


277 


bare shouldered, her wrists still braceleted, the great 
string of pearls she had worn at dinner rising and 
falling tumultuously on that white bosom the thin 
wrap covered so scantily ; her half-loosed hair break- 
ing from its ribbons, the moonlight bringing her up 
like a silver statue against the black backing of the 
shadows beyond, splendidly regardless of convention 
in her frightened beauty. Well might we gaze on 
her, and wonder to which world she belonged ! 

It was she that spoke first : “ Oh, how hor- 
rible and wicked of you both; oh, how silly and 
stupid to maim and cut each other like rioters out- 
side a tavern! Give me your sword, Mr. Lepidus, 
and yours, Mr. Allanby.” 

Very sulkily and foolishly we obeyed, my rival 
saying as he handed his over : 

“ The cause, lady, must be our excuse for the 
folly.” 

“ And if I was the cause, let me be the remedy, 
too,” said the charming lady, turning her eyes first 
to one and then the other. “ Oh, promise me you 
will never try this silly thing again! Think how 
sorry either of you would have been had the other 
been hurt, and think how to-morrow I should have 
hated him that gave the hurt ” 

“ That were a consideration like to damp the 
keenest anger.” 


278 LEPIDUS THE CENTURION 


“ Why, then, promise me that this ends here,” she 
said, looking at me, while at the same time she 
laid a finger of entreaty on the Roman’s hand, so 
that we shared between us glance and gesture. 
What could we do but assent, with that sweet ap- 
parition standing peacemaker between us? Now 
that the hot blood was running cool again the naked 
stupidity of the affair became tenfold obvious to my 
mind, and an unromantic thankfulness possessed 
me that nothing worse had happened. For sup- 
pose something had happened, and I, a creditable 
country squire and justice of the peace, had been 
left standing in the moonlight over the slaughtered 
body of my guest ! Suppose — but, there ! the matter 
would not bear suppositions, and I gave my word to 
Miss Smith with a heartiness that, perhaps, spoke 
more eloquently of my discretion than of my valour. 
Lepidus accepted the situation too, with brief good 
humour; and so Priscilla led us presently back in 
triumph towards the house. 

Where the shrubbery path ended upon the lawn 
she stopped, and turning said again, “ Remember, 
you have promised no more of to-night’s foolish- 
ness, and not a word to anyone. Think, dear Mr. 
Lepidus, how they would laugh if it were talked of ! ” 

The Centurion promised in the name of both of 
us there should be no more swordsmanship ; and we 


THE LAST RESORT 


279 

passed indoors, and at the stair-foot said good-night 
to our sweet peacemaker, apparently reconciled. 

But no sooner had the hem of her skirt disap- 
peared in the upper passages than the Roman, with 
set face, turned to me and said : “ It is a pity to 

let this thing cool down, cousin Allanby, when we 
have wrought ourselves to a white-heat to settle it. 
The smiths say good metal like yours and mine, 
white-heated, too often never pays for forging in 
the end. Believe me, there is no way with the diffi- 
culty we are in but a sudden way. Next week, if 
we let ourselves cool down, the matter will still be 
just as pressing, the way out just as difficult. There- 
fore, good cousin, while we still be molten, let us 
put it through — if not by sword, why then by some- 
thing subtler. My uncle Marius ” 

“ Curse thy uncle Marius ! ” 

“ Oh, with all my heart. He was a tough rogue 
that uncle Marius, and was so well cursed alive he 
is not like to mind a little dead. I was only going 
to say he knew, and taught me, many cunning ways, 
whereby an imprisoned soul, restless for one reason 
or another, could very easily and comfortably shake 
off this heavy encumbrance called a body, and wing 
its way elsewhere. Now, cousin, I would suggest 
that you should let me mix a potion — not much, or 
nasty to the taste — but just such as he would have 


iSo 


LEPIDUS THE CENTURION 


prescribed for this malady we suffer from, limpid, 
brief, and certain; and that with this divine elixir 
ready mixed we both go boldly in to the lady of our 
troubles, tell her like soldiers how it stands between 
us, that we both covet her, and that the round world 
is no longer big enough for both. Let her choose 
between us, and let him whom the lady will not have, 
have the cup instead.” 

“ Are you serious, Lepidus ? ” 

“ Yes, quite.” 

“ Then let it be as you say,” I answered. “ There 
is no way else I know of, and this at least is quick 
and painless. To-morrow, then, we settle it — here’s 
my hand, old fellow. I never meant it to come to 
this, but I see no other way.” 

“ Right well and manly spoken, cousin,” said the 
great Roman, “ here’s my hand in turn : Jove ! that 
uncle Marius were here! ’Tis just the issue to our 
trouble that would have delighted him above all 
else.” 


CHAPTER XIX 


SPOILS TO THE VICTOR; DEATH TO THE VAN- 
QUISHED ” 

S O it had come to this, and I cannot say I was 
greatly grieved ! I had been so wrought on 
lately, it seemed so impossible that either I 
or Lepidus could win final favour with that sweet 
arbiter of our fates, and the other survive, that 
after the first shock the Roman’s barbarian scheme 
appeared the only reasonable way out of the diffi- 
culty. I have seen two schoolboys, with all the 
world young and golden at their feet, plan just such 
a deadly cast for a trivial cause; and there are, I 
am certain, frames of mind in which death is robbed 
of all its meaning, and becomes a cheerful alter- 
native only. So it was with me when the Centurion 
had expounded his plan for “ taking Fate into our 
councils/’ as he airily called it. I went up to my 
room late that evening, locked myself in, and throw- 
ing back the top of my great roll-desk set myself 
to make things as straight as might be for my 
281 


282 


LEPIDUS THE CENTURION 


executors, should chance call their services into 
being. 

Yet how much there was to do at such a 
moment ! I sat amazed at the complexities of life as 
I stood face to face with the chance of losing 
it. Again and again I started up, from no spirit of 
cowardice, but from sheer awe of the array of the 
virtuous things I had left undone, and the bad ones I 
had vowed to amend; and as often as I got to my 
door on the way to tell Lepidus I could not go yet, 
the thing must be postponed, so often I shrank from 
the thought of what he might think of me, and 
came back to my seat. And there I sat all night, 
destroying, sorting, and apologising, making such 
amends as one can in an hour or two for a lifetime 
of neglected opportunities — till my room was a 
white sea of torn papers, and the lights grew dim to 
my tired eyes as the dawn came trickling in behind 
the curtains. Then I got up, and taking my candle, 
went down the passage to my room. I had to pass 
the Centurion’s on the way, and noticed he had put 
his boots out to be cleaned, while from within, as I 
stopped a moment to listen, there came the regular 
and undisturbed sound of his child-like sleeping. 
Happy fellow, ideal mortal, who could sit so light 
to the to-come, who had no executors and no unpaid 
obligations, no great expectancies ahead and no sor- 


SPOILS TO THE VICTOR 283 

rows behind, to whom all life centred in the ar- 
dour of the moment — no wonder he could sleep 
like that ! 

As for me, do what I might, I could not rest; for 
an hour or two I tossed on my bed watching the day 
slowly wake, and it was only when the first sunlight 
was overlaying the morning with gold that I dropped 
off into uneasy slumbers, and dreamt that Lepidus 
and I were mixing sherbet for all my social credit- 
ors in the village schoolroom, the which refreshing 
draught my mother and Pris were taking round the 
circle, and administering to each expectant indi- 
vidual in turn by means of our best silver soup 
ladle, and from a bucket marked with ominous 
distinctness — “ Poison.” 

At breakfast time I was red-eyed and sullen, and 
to me it seemed that all looks were turned my way 
with reproach and suspicion; even the Roman was 
less elated than usual, while the Bishop’s muffled 
tones at the far end of the table sounded in my ears 
like a funeral oration. 

At last it was over, and then Lepidus brightened 
up. He came to me as soon as the guests had drifted 
away, and, catching my arm with something of the 
old friendship, whispered in my ear, “ The little ante- 
room by the conservatory — be there in half an hour ! 
I have told Miss Smith there is something of interest 


284 LEPIDUS THE CENTURION 


on hand for her, and she has promised to come into 
the drawing-room a little later; so, dear cousin 
Louis, we will put this thing through very conven- 
iently. By the way,” he added cheerily, after a mo- 
ment’s hesitation, and giving as he spoke a glance 
at a little phial containing some greenish crystals in 
his breast pocket, “ can you lend me a pestle and 
mortar for a few minutes? Not that one you use for 
mashing the young jackdaws’ food — so unhealthy 
afterwards for the jackdaws — but any other would 
do.” When I told him I had not one, “ Oh, never 
mind,” he laughed, “ Binks will lend me a hammer — 
very insoluble stuff, you know — but once mixed cer- 
tain as Jove’s own thunderbolt.” And, nodding to 
me as though he went but to brew a dose for a dis- 
tempered ferret, the Centurion strode away with that 
easy, confident stride of his to look for Binks, and 
the hammer. 

Lepidus broke up that wicked stuff, whatever it 
was, in the gun-room — I could hear him pounding 
away all that miserable half-hour; and when it was 
over I met him in the ante-room, as he had sug- 
gested. He brought “ the mixture ” with him, and 
had an air of obvious triumph on his handsome coun- 
tenance. 

“Look!” he said, showing me the pale green 
powder, “ the surest medicine in the world for cases 


SPOILS TO THE VICTOR 


285 


like ours. I remember seeing my mother mix some 
once for a slave of hers, and I was so fascinated I 
hid in a cupboard and saw the man unwittingly drink 
it — saw him start and reel as the fire ran into his 
veins; half turn about and go headlong down, and 
lie there squirming and clawing at the cloths, while 
the death-yellow came into his face, and his chatter- 
ing teeth set hard in a smother of blood and 
foam ” 

“ Ay,” I answered, forgetting everything just then 
but the long forgotten as I rested my hand upon 
the shoulder of my Roman self, and leant with him 
over the green dust that was in a few moments to set 
one of our twin souls travelling into space. 

“ I remember ! 'twas because he had stolen 
nectar from my mother's store — he had a thirsty 
throat, and was always trying to embellish the 
slave's black bread and water. Do you recollect how 
another time he mixed and drank the lees from all 
the tankards on a feast table, and was fuddled for 
two days afterwards ? ” 

“ The mother fuddled him that last time,” said 
the Centurion, with a laugh, “ mixed him a draught 
that cured him of thirst for ever, and sent his soul 
to serve in hell ! And now to business. May I ring 
for a tumbler ? ” 

When the maid came, Lepidus, unabashed to the 


286 LEPIDUS THE CENTURION 


end, smiled splendidly on her, and ordered a glass 
and some wine, spending the interval until they came 
striding up and down the room, the while he talked 
of strange long-dead scenes and people, every sen- 
tence calling a flitting picture to my mind. And so 
swift and life-like those things were that it seemed 
the whole of that ancient page of ours flashed out in 
those few minutes in a whirl before me, full, vivid, 
and crowded; but so intangible that as fast as one 
scene came upon the heels of another I forgot its 
foregoer. 

Then while the gay pantomime was still unwinding 
before my half-shut eyes, there came a tap upon the 
door, and in came the maid with a neatly napkined 
tray, and on it a cut-glass beaker, wine, and cake 
upon a silver dish. The Roman laughed lightly at 
that refreshment. “ Thanks, damsel,” he said ; “ for 
the drink ; Mr. Louis here and I have got a thirst be- 
tween us not to be lightly quenched ; but we are not 
hungry, I do not know when we shall be hungry 
again — eh, cousin? ” I shook my head, marvelling 
how he could speak so gaily; and just as the door 
was closing on the maid he called her back. “ Here, 
you pretty sprig of virginity: go to Miss Priscilla 
Smith, give her Mr. Allanby’s compliments, and say 
he wants to bask in the sunshine of her eyes for a 
few minutes; or, more simply, say Mr. Allanby 


SPOILS TO THE VICTOR 


287 


would be grateful to her for all the rest of the life 
that may be left to him if she would come into 
the drawing-room. You understand?” 

“ Yes, sir,” answered the girl, who, poor thing, 
had a very tender spot for the Centurion deep down 
in her simple heart; and as she closed the door the 
Roman drew the tray over to him, poured the powder 
into the glass, covered it with wine, shook it up, 
and then, taking a coin from his pocket, turned to 
me. “ Quick,” he said, “ there is no time to be 
lost. We go in to her together , mind; and he who 
wins this toss I will now make puts his case first to 
her, with all heaven in front and hell behind him! 
She shall hear us both; then choose. And he who 
loses comes here and drinks — you understand ? ” 

“ Yes,” I answered, feeling as though I were liv- 
ing on the dregs of life, as I always did when the 
Roman was excited; a horrible cowardice in my 
blood, and my stupid mind so clouded I could find 
nothing better to think of than what my mother 
would say when she found out there was a hole in 
the damask napkin with which I was playing. 

“ Cry, then,” said the Roman in a voice which 
rang with the pride of those lordly ancestors of his, 
and tossing the coin into the air. “ Cry, you 
dweller on the moss-hags; heads or ships, which 
is it, you barbarian ? ” 


288 LEPIDUS THE CENTURION 


And mechanically I called out “ Heads ! ” as the 
coin fell ; and heads it was ! Then Lepidus, throw- 
ing the gold upon the tray for the maid, gave me his 
hand (which never again did I touch in life) ; and 
so we stood for a space, hand-fast, eye to eye, while 
a ray of sunshine came in at the window and played 
tenderly about the potion on the table, the elixir of 
life for one of us, and of death for the other, filling 
it full of quaint, eddying forms and lovely opal tints. 
And then the drawing-room door beyond the cur- 
tained archway opened softly, closed again; and we 
heard a woman’s easy footfall go over to the win- 
dow. 

If I were to try for twenty years I could not tell 
you exactly what took place in the next twenty min- 
utes. Never in my life had I come to an emergency 
less fit. My very soul quaked within me, not with 
actual fear, but with an overpowering sense of all 
I felt I had lost — for the battle seemed certain de- 
feat even before it had commenced. I was not my- 
self, the Roman had been draining my vitality from 
me all these days and weeks; and now at the very 
crisis of my life I was sick with an absolute bodily 
sickness, as well as unnerved in spirit. 

How I even began that momentous interview 
is a mystery to me; but begun it had to be, 
and with a desperate effort I went up to the 


SPOILS TO THE VICTOR 


289 


girl we had come to woo so strangely, and 
while Lepidus stood in the background, arms 
folded and head bent, all his molten passions 
sealed up for the time in the silence of a 
statue, I went over to Miss Smith, and with a hor- 
rible sense of insufficiency blurted out my errand. I 
know she started, glancing uneasily at my pallid 
face and the other man in the shadows — wondering 
the while, no doubt, why I had brought such a lis- 
tener with me; but it was no time for delicacy, and, 
feeling a little better when the first words were 
spoken, I plunged desperately forward, reminding 
her of her troth and my love, of the fidelity she had 
sworn before the other came upon us, of the rivalry 
between us, palpable to her as to everyone, and of 
the impossibility of either living his life to its end 
without her. I conjured up the old affection and my 
steadfastness, imploring her again for the love she 
had once given so freely, saying I was unworthy — 
I felt it, I knew it in every fibre — but that that very 
consciousness spoke of my affection. It was a poor 
speech for the occasion, it sounded hollow and com- 
monplace even to me — a hireling advocate in a 
hurry for his lunch would have done better for an 
uninteresting scoundrel at the judgment seat. Its 
insufficiency was the last bitter drop in the cup of my 
humiliation; but I could do no more; and when it 


2 9 o LEPIDUS THE CENTURION 


was over with hands across my face I stepped back 
into the shadow. 

Then Lepidus sprang forward. In the stress of 
my own emotions I had all but forgotten him, and it 
was not till I had said my very last word, and was 
standing like a culprit waiting doom, that the Ro- 
man took his turn. Without waiting for even a sign 
from the pale girl — breathlessly marvelling at the 
ordeal we were putting her to — he sprang to the 
onset with the same vigour that had doubtless car- 
ried him victorious up the bloody glacis of many an 
old-world fort, and almost before I knew he was 
moving he was before Priscilla, he had got her hand, 
saluting it with soldier gallantry upon one knee ; and 
then the next minute, up on foot again, was pressing 
the fair enemy back as it were from her defences by 
the sheer weight of his determination and eloquence. 

Lord, what a soldier he must have been ! What a 
fellow to meet in a sally-port! How the British 
bucklers must have cracked, and palisades and spear- 
shafts splintered where he led an onset ! How could 
any mortal girl stand up against such wooing, now 
tender and deep, now splendidly imperious — claim- 
ing her love as a right, now offering the wealth of 
his affection in the present, and then throwing over 
her hesitation, by covert reminders, the glamour of 


SPOILS TO THE VICTOR 


291 


the past, of that ancient love that was rooted in the 
innermost recesses of her soul. I myself was dazed 
by the irresistible torrent of his pleading, the mag- 
netism of his love. Had it been for me to decide, I 
do believe I should have decided then and there for 
him. As it was, I say again, I stood agape, mar- 
velling, spell-bound, like one who watches a great 
actor come upon the scene on the heels of some 
limping mummer, and feels himself swept away 
without power of resistance. 

Minute after minute the Roman went on, while 
the colour came and went on the fair face he watched 
so keenly; and then, with a last appeal that would 
surely have melted the heart of a marble nymph, his 
voice softened, he let the hand he had been holding 
drop, and bending his head in fine humility folded 
his arms and stood in turn waiting his doom. 

And the lady? she, when the stream of that fiery 
eloquence stopped, turned away from us for a space; 
and I can guess, though I have never dared to ask, 
what the struggle was of those few silent moments. 
They were an age to me, but an age of numb indif- 
ference; the Roman had all my life in him, as cer- 
tainly as though he had all my blood in his veins. 
I was but the bystander, the one waiting to be out- 
cast, a cypher of indifference even to myself; until 


2 9 i LEPIDUS THE CENTURION 


as I watched, hoping nothing, and not fearing much, 
Priscilla roused herself, and went over and took the 
Centurion's hand! 

“ Oh, Mr. Lepidus,” she began, looking perfectly 
lovely in her anxiety, “ I am so sorry for this that is 
between you two. I never meant it, and should be 
sorry till I died if I thought I had in any way led to 
it. For the love you say you have had for me I am 
grateful, grateful as any girl must be for such a 
splendid gift. And I will not deny that there has 
been something in you, which as yet I do not under- 
stand, that has stirred a strange response within me. 
But, oh, Mr. Lepidus, I have struggled against it, 
fearing, I knew not why. That struggle was my 
duty, duty as sacred to me as my love itself ; and you, 
if you feel towards me as you say, will be glad 
that duty has won. I am grateful to you, more 
grateful than I can tell; but I have given my troth 
to Mr. Allanby here, and I cannot, I will not, I do 
not wish to withdraw it.” 

* * * * 

“ You are certain of this, lady,” said Marcus 
Lepidus quietly, after a pause. 

“ Quite certain of it, and may God forgive me if 
by any carelessness I have laid you open to pain.” 

Then the strong man, as gravely and gently as 


SPOILS TO THE VICTOR 


293 


though she were but a sister who had come to some 
wise decision, took both her hands in his, kissing 
them and her forehead; then, turning, led her to me. 
He put her hands in mine, and, laying his hands on 
our shoulders, said, “ May the felicities of the In- 
finite, and the friendships of Those who Endure be 
with you always, my dear comrades of a day ! ” and, 
without more ado, turned and left us. 

For me, I was so overwhelmed that I think it was 
Pris who led me, rather than I her, to a sofa. I 
scarcely realised I had won ; I was in a state of torpor, 
and not even the delightful nearness of that beautiful 
girl, who had just given me such an unexpected 
proof of her affection, was sufficient to rouse me. I 
sat numb like that until on the vacancy of my mind 
there fell a little tinkle of glass upon metal, a thin 
musical sound, like the falling of rain-drops upon 
the surface of a well. At the moment I thought 
nothing of the sound but I remembered it after- 
wards ! 

Almost at the same instant a shiver passed 
through me, and an indescribable sense of returning 
strength came upon me; my head cleared, my heart 
beat anew, life reasserted its interest, and all of a 
sudden the glory of my victory, the immeasurable 
extent of my happiness rushed into actuality. With 
a deep sense of relief, coming from some source I 


294 LEPIDUS THE CENTURION 


knew not of, I turned to the charming girl at my 
side, and gave her thanks for what was indeed be- 
yond thanks. And she was as blushful and sweet as 
you could wish; she nestled in to me almost for the 
first time, like a country girl whose lips have just 
given away to her lover the open secret of her eyes. 
Now, as I look back, I perceive that at that moment 
the page was turned, a clean new chapter of our lives 
begun under the mysterious design of Providence; 
then I did but know we were wholly absorbed in each 
other, there was no need for words — how should 
there be, for each knew all the other could say more 
than well. 

We had sat like that, hand-fast, in supreme happi- 
ness, for some little time, when Priscilla, breaking 
the silence, looked away to the window with some- 
thing like tears in her eyes, and murmured almost 
to herself, “ Poor, poor Mr. Lepidus ! I wonder 
how he will take it ! ” 

Poor Lepidus indeed ! The generosity of him who 
has won the game filled my heart at the mention of 
his name. How, indeed, would he take it? How? 
And, then with a cry and a start, I recalled for 
the first time our compact! It was impossible he 
would carry it out, I cried to myself; it was surely 
but a grim jest of his. To me, the winner, it 
seemed life might well be full of happiness yet for 


SPOILS TO THE VICTOR 


295 


him, the loser! Where was he? Surely he would 
never put that cruel jest of his into execution, and 
presently again I should hear the cheery voice of the 
gallant Roman bantering me on my success. 

I sprang to my feet, now forgetting Priscilla in 
turn, and flew to the curtained portal. I tore the 
hanging aside, and glanced within. Everything 
was exactly as we had left it — the chairs, the table, 
the tray, the trivial cake and biscuits, the wine-de- 
canter ; but Lepidus was not there ! I rushed to the 
tray, and snatched up the glass that had held the 
deadly decoction. It was empty — drained to the 
last dregs! 

Then, as I replaced it slowly with trembling hand, 
the meaning of that tinkling sound I had heard 
dawned upon me. The Centurion had come straight 
in here, and, faithful to his word, as he always was, 
had carried out our agreement with proud simplicity. 
It was his setting down of the glass on the tray I 
had heard; and as the death draught loosened the 
brave life in him I had felt it at the same instant fly 
back to my own veins ! 

Where was he? Where had he gone? I flew 
out into the passages, and from room to room with 
fierce eagerness, but nowhere was he to be seen. It 
was only afterwards, on the evening of that memor- 
able day, when the actual truth was like lead upon 


296 LEPIDUS THE CENTURION 


my heart, that I gathered from one servitor, and 
another, a partial knowledge of the way he had taken 
when he left that fatal room. Janet had watched him 
cross the hall, and he had smiled graciously as ever 
to her. A footman had seen him stumble and clutch 
at the pillars as he went out into the grounds by the 
side-door through which he had first entered the 
Manor. A gardener, sweeping dead leaves, had no- 
ticed him tear a hasty rose or two from a bush, and 
throw them in at Priscilla’s open window above the 
portico, then round to the stables he had passed for 
a minute, his agony increasing at every step. 

“ Binks, Binks ! ” the Roman had shouted ; but 
there was no answer, until a stableman came forward 
and, touching his cap, said with a smile, for everyone 
loved Lepidus : 

“ Binks is away, sir, — gone down to the village 
on an errand of the missus.” 

“ Oh, very well,” gasped the Centurion, steadying 
himself by the gate-post, “ ’tis not much, but I owe 
him fourpence ha’penny for gunpowder to put in the 
housekeeper’s candlesticks. See, here is a shilling. 
Let him give me the change when we meet again. 
And tell him — tell him that Marcus Lepidus, neither 
here nor hereafter, forgets debts, great or small.” 
And with a friendly nod to the man, the great Ro- 
man reeled away. 


SPOILS TO THE VICTOR 


297 


“ He went away,” said the fellow to his friends in 
the hall that night, “ swaying to and fro just like 
one of them tall poplars in the wind. Every mo- 
ment I thought he’d be down, but I hadn’t the power 
of a bean-stalk in my whole body to go after and help 
him. I saw something was amiss, but I was just 
glued in that gateway, for I had seen his face before 
he turned, and there was something there that went 
straight through me and out the other side, and left 
me, not scared, but clean bereft of my senses. Lord, 
how handsome he did look! He’d got a face when 
’twas all right with him that would set all other men 
cursing their images in the glass, but with the pain 
on him — there ! It’s no good asking me about it, I 
darst no more have put him a question or followed 
him than I darst have followed the devil himself.” 

These things I learned in the evening. I myself 
had searched the house out, and the gardens, in the 
first moments of our loss; and then, guided by in- 
stinct, had gone off as fast as feet could carry me to 
the pine-covered knoll where first I had found him. 
There, surely, if anywhere he would go when the 
game he had played so manfully was lost, and there, 
after him, I hurried. Up the well-remembered path 
I went, breathlessly, peering on every side for a trace 
of the Roman, thinking he spoke in every sigh of the 
branches overhead, and so won the top at last. All 


298 LEPIDUS THE CENTURION 


was silent and deserted; the squirrels were still play- 
ing round the bole of a neighbouring tree, as they 
had done on that great afternoon long ago; a blue 
pigeon was hunting amongst the pine-needles on the 
russet carpet of the ground. And in my fear I 
called aloud, “ Lepidus ! Lepidus ! friend, comrade, 
my better self, where are you? ” 

Surely he would hear; he was never deaf yet to 
the voice of friend or foe; and as I listened, out of 
the thick arcades of the low, black branches there 
came a responding whisper, “ Where are you ? ” 

“ Lepidus/’ I cried, “ poor, poor Lepidus ! ” And 
again the echo answered softly, “ Poor, poor Lepi- 
dus ! ” Then, knowing the hill was but sharing in 
my sorrow, over to the crypt I hurried, and saw 
without surprise that the covering slab had been 
newly lifted and thrown back! 

After a few moments’ hesitation, I ran to the dark 
little entrance, and, calling “ Lepidus ! ” again, with- 
out waiting for the answer, sprang down into the 
cell. Groping eagerly forward, until my eyes be- 
came accustomed to the gloom, I found the stony 
bier, and there — there upon it, laid out straight and 
calm, his feet crossed like an old crusader, and his 
strong hands nerveless by his sides, was he whom 
I sought ! 

All the rivalry and jealousy of those days was 


SPOILS TO THE VICTOR 299 

forgotten in that moment of pity, and only the love 
and wonder, born of our strange friendship, re- 
mained. I threw myself upon him, as I had done 
when my breath called him to life, caressing and call- 
ing to him, lavishing on him almost a woman's ten- 
derness. And to my eyes presently the crypt grew 
strangely light, though I did not marvel at it at the 
moment, with just such a brightness as he used to 
tell me came when spirits were about, and by that 
light I saw that he was dead — dead beyond recall; 
and even as I held him there upon my shoulder, in 
that strange, soft radiance, the last semblance of life 
went out of that comely face, as the shine goes out of 
the western sky at nightfall. For many minutes I 
held him tight to my breast, till the last spark had 
gone, and it was but a cold, empty husk I held, then 
gently replacing him on the bier of his own choosing, 
I placed my own head in turn on his shoulder, and 
wept without shame or stint. 

* * * * 

It was nearly two years afterwards that we, my 
dear wife and I, came back to the Manor House from 
long travel abroad. And with us there came — to 
delight the heart of my excellent mother, and throw 
the household into helpless confusion — the newest of 
new babes. 


300 LEPIDUS THE CENTURION 


Those two women, obedient to their unalterable 
destiny, were wholly absorbed in that pink frag- 
ment of humanity, that swaddled nonentity with the 
mild blue eyes and uneasy digestion ! But I was not 
a bringer forth of guessers at the great riddle; I, 
alas for myself, was one of those who guess and 
guess, spoiling all this life by speculation on another, 
and Lepidus haunted me in those familiar rooms and 
corridors. I had grown very tender to him of late 
— how could it be otherwise ? I had been the winner 
in that brief contest that had brought us face to face 
for a time. It was I who, against all likelihood, had 
won from him that prize for which he had waited a 
thousand years, and had come back to this life again. 
It was by my side she slept at night, and it was my 
little one over whom she bent, while the warm April 
tears of her delighted motherhood fell like gracious 
rain upon its face. 

How could I bear him malice ? I had thought of 
him times without number during those wanderings. 
I had thought of him in Picardy, as I watched the 
dusty oxen hauling their ploughs through soil that 
tradition said was still ruddy with Gaulish and Ro- 
man blood. I had turned my back sternly on the 
modern, and pictured him into life again amongst 
the ruins of the Forum, there in his own Imperial 
city. I had lain out amongst the tangled vines on 


SPOILS TO THE VICTOR 


301 


Sicilian hillsides, and pretended to myself that that 
white-sailed oil felucca slipping over the blue plain 
below was his galley. I had thought of him in the 
footsteps of Antony, and by the broken stony dais 
of his great kinsman, and far away into places where 
even the Imperial eagle never penetrated. 

But, somehow, he never came to me so strongly as 
here, where I had known and loved him and his great 
heart, cramped and confined as it was by petty mod- 
ern surroundings. Every room was full of him, 
every passage-way resounded to my inner ears with 
the sound of his swift, confident steps. His cheery, 
bright voice, with more expression in the bare sound 
of it than in the full speech of most of us, was on 
the stairs ; I could hear him laughing in the hall, as 
unfeignedly as a thrush sings when spring sunshine 
unwinds the grey winter vapours from the spruce 
stems. He was in the courtyard, graciously happy 
amongst the servitors; and in the drawing-room 
amongst our guests, dispensing his Imperial conde- 
scension without a touch of arrogance. He was in 
the gun-room, pointing out to astonished listeners 
why balista slings were better than Joe Mantons for 
general sport; and in the billiard-room, behind the 
blue smoke wreaths, telling me with vague half-hesi- 
tation of shadowy marvels, whereof even to this 
minute I know not the truth or value. 


302 LEPIDUS THE CENTURION 


Wandering round and round, with his name on 
my lips, I grew so haunted, that it was almost as 
though the Centurion were calling me to come to him 
there on his mound ; and directly after breakfast, on 
the second day following our arrival, I started for 
the pine wood. There was another and a plainer 
reason drawing me there, for I was eager to see how 
our sculptor guest had carried out a commission 
given him, to set up a more than life-size statue of 
Lepidus on the knoll. If he had failed to get the 
spirit of the place by a hair’s-breadth I should hate 
his labour; and how well he might have failed! 

It was a beautiful morning in early summer: 
the leaves out, the lawns glossy with dew; a dead 
calm on the lake, and the far landscape tinged with 
a soft light with the faintest touch of rosiness in 
it. A cock starling on the tall chimney-stack was 
warbling to his mate under the tiles, the pointed 
feathers on his under-throat erect, and glittering 
with his emotion, like steel points in the sunshine; 
the pigeons were cooing in their cote; a chiff-chaff 
was chattering in the low rhododendrons. And there, 
in my path, was my wife, all in white; the light of 
the morning on her pleasant cheeks, contentment with 
the ways of Providence in her eyes, and her babe in 
her arms ! 

I had intended to go alone, and now meeting 


SPOILS TO THE VICTOR 


303 

her, after the first kiss, I hesitated. And she 
saw my project, as she sees most things, and looking 
me full in the eyes, while a shade of gravity came 
over her sweet countenance, she said, simply, “ I am 
coming, too.” 

So we three went together : through the well-re- 
membered gate, over the crisp meadow track, and up 
the twining path between the red pine stems. Half- 
way up we stopped a moment to gather breath. 
Then on again, until the shadows thinned, and 
twenty yards further that well-remembered little 
amphitheatre amongst the crowning pines burst 
upon us, and what we saw held us spell-bound for a 
moment. 

The lovely little amphitheatre, locked in by the 
green arms of the pines, — surely as sweet a spot as 
ever Nature dedicated to peace and repose, — was 
again just as I had always known it. The brood- 
ing shadows all about it ; the low feathery branches 
that lifted now and then, as though unseen draperies 
brushed them ; the speckled sunshine making tender 
mosaics on the turf ; the crimson foxgloves standing 
pensive in the arbours, and overhead the pigeons 
softly crooning lullabies — everything was the same. 
But what fixed our eyes at once was that there, right 
in the centre, between sunshine and shadow, stood 
the memorial I had ordered; and the first delighted 


304 LEPIDUS THE CENTURION 


glance told me it was well done — past all my expecta- 
tions. It might have been so poor, and it was full of 
splendid life; it might have but marred the spot, yet, 
instead, it filled it with that presence we knew and 
loved — filled it with the inspiration of reality, as only 
genius working lovingly can do, — and it did not 
need the confirming pressure of my dear wife’s 
hand to make me feel that Lepidus was somehow 
present in that green bronze effigy ! 

The cunning artist had sent his thoughts back to 
that day when the Roman, to please us, rode our 
great black horse over the stable gates, and round 
the park; and finally, you will remember, pulled that 
mighty beast, that no one else could sit, back on his 
haunches by our doorway. It was the very incident 
again in adamant! There, on a low, unrailed plat- 
form of the native stone lying all about, and already 
welded together by kindly time and green mosses, 
reared the bronze horse, pressed back by the strong 
hand upon the reins, his full veins standing like 
knotted cordage from his arching neck, his skin 
glossy with the sweat of his humbled pride, his mane 
and tail still all a-sweep with the suddenness of his 
checking; and astride of him, sitting with gallant 
ease, the Roman rider, broad shoulders back, hands 
down, and keen, brave face half turned towards us. 
It was Lepidus himself! — the same bold eyes that 


SPOILS TO THE VICTOR 305 

never flinched shining from his face, the same smile 
about his mouth, linking in a golden bond a fiery 
spirit and a gentle heart — the Roman, down to those 
heels so tightly pressed against the sweating stallion’s 
sides. And as I looked in admiration and delight, 
the dear lady by me, moved by the same feeling, 
stepped swiftly forward. 

“ Oh, Lepidus,” she said, “ dear Lepidus ! may 
those who rule our fates, and time our goings and 
comings, give you all the joy and consolation we 
could wish you ! ” And then, stirred as it were by a 
sudden inspiration, she uncovered the face of the 
little one there, where it lay close to her bosom, and 
stepping to the Roman’s knee, with a half blush and 
a moment’s hesitation, laid that youngling, that’hand- 
ful of pink flesh and dainty lace, in the rider’s arms. 

Perhaps it was only my heated fancy, or the shift- 
ing shadows of a branch above, but it seemed to me 
for one moment — for just so long as the dry husk 
the squirrel discarded in the nearest fir tree took to 
flutter to the ground — that the great bronze head 
was bent a little to that tender babe, and to the wist- 
ful mother by it; and for a fleeting second or two, 
over the comely face, and about the corners of those 
Imperial lips, there flickered a smile of new meaning 
— of pleasure, of approval, and of contentment, last- 
ing and real ! 
































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